abstraction

Every analogy works at a sufficiently high level of abstraction.

From Slate ● Jun. 26, 2026

As his band moves from abstraction back into song form, his evident freedom at the drum kit—something Roach helped make possible—suggests new meaning for the lyric “I’m gonna sit at the welcome table.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026

A trillion is a number so large it stops being a number and becomes an abstraction, something inconceivable.

From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2026

Journalists moved in the opposite direction, toward uncertainty, because without witnesses, displacement becomes statistics and war becomes abstraction.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 11, 2026

I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow.

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

It creates abstractions of the real world that allow it to assess the outcomes of actions.

From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2026

Like Homer’s, Mr. Armitage’s gods are not distant abstractions but present projections of human failings, embodiments of forces we struggle to name even after 40 centuries.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026

Power and policy are not abstractions — they impact real people’s bodies, minds and lives, and they affect the well-being of the larger community.

From Salon ● Mar. 3, 2026

These are abstractions, and they can get devalued in the discourse.

From Slate ● Dec. 27, 2025

These abstractions become containers in which they store and handle their ideas, and before they know it they can no longer call anything by its name.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker