abstraction

For much of the novel, we inhabit the consciousness of Lok, a young male Neanderthal who hasn’t yet acquired the habits of abstraction on which narrative usually depends.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026

Every analogy works at a sufficiently high level of abstraction.

From Slate ● Jun. 26, 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

There was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction.

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

First, practice distinguishing between what the Constitution says and what judges and justices say about the Constitution, a document riddled with aspirational vagaries and flexible abstractions.

From Slate ● Jul. 20, 2026

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

However, there are growing examples in animal research demonstrating that animals do indeed use music, and that monkeys and other animals use musical patterns and can hear abstractions in music as well.

From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin