I. adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
abstract noun
an abstract concept (= based on general ideas rather than on something that exists )
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He finds it hard to grasp abstract concepts.
an abstract notion
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In art, how can you represent abstract notions such as peace or justice?
an abstract sculpture
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an abstract sculpture of the universe
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
highly
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The danger in viewing the organisation as a purposeful entity is that one ends up with a highly abstract and artificial analysis.
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It follows that narrative poetics is in fact a form of historiography, a highly abstract story of stories.
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One reason for this may have lain in the unwillingness of biologists to accept the highly abstract nature of his theory.
purely
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Her work became more purely abstract , and yet refused to conform to the Puritan style often associated with abstract art.
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But, of course, they must never remain purely abstract .
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Such thoughts were not purely abstract , but directed towards Eliot's own values and to London.
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Genette's relational strategy leads him to construct purely abstract combinations without any real existence in literature.
■ NOUN
art
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For example, cubism is very little like its object, and abstract art , not at all.
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And this museum, previously named the Museum of Non-Objective Art , was championing abstract art as early as the 1930s.
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Really I prefer abstract art , but it's more difficult to sell.
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Pop art directly challenged what was increasingly seen as abstract art's esoteric retreat from the world.
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In 1937 the historian Meyer Schapiro, writing first in Marxist Quarterly, analysed the opposition of realist and abstract art .
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David Tindle recounts: Minton was further exacerbated by the groundswell of interest in abstract art forming at this time.
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One of the reasons is, I think, that there was a kind of tension between abstract art and decoration.
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Her work became more purely abstract , and yet refused to conform to the Puritan style often associated with abstract art .
artist
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It is, however, especially difficult in the history of modernism to reconnect abstract artists with nature.
concept
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As we shall see, there are problems inherent in trying to give shape to such an abstract concept as political culture.
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Ultimately, a central objective of political theorizing is to replace proper names with abstract concepts .
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We frequently telephone asking him to illustrate some obscure or abstract concept .
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As she gets older; she may have difficulty comprehending abstract concepts that are communicated through what she hears.
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Political culture is a vague abstract concept that has been subject to various definitions.
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Words are only essential to put across more abstract concepts and intellectual ideas.
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Mathematics Mathematics is concerned essentially with understanding abstract concepts .
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Yet the scholarly energy which reinvigorated abstract concepts of political function was identical with that which satirized them.
expressionism
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She is remembered largely for her pioneering ` dancing modernism, a corollary to abstract expressionism .
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Like Watson, Carr has assembled generous visual material on the best-known artists of abstract expressionism , especially Pollock and de Kooning.
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In the context of post-war uncertainty it is relatively easy to relate existentialism to abstract expressionism .
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O'Hara's list of friends reads like a Who's Who of abstract expressionism .
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Far from hanging on to its radical credentials, abstract expressionism was seen by many to have sedimented into mainstream orthodoxy.
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The cult of abstract expressionism ricocheted around the world.
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The dominance of abstract expressionism has been buttressed by an impressive degree of partisanship and an illusion of consensus.
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The titles of these essays indicate that the terms in which historians were writing about abstract expressionism had refocused art history.
expressionist
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The museum directors and critics did not name any abstract expressionist , let alone Pollock.
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We encounter Judd before the rest of the minimalists and Clyfford Still after his fellow abstract expressionists .
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Lately I have been studying the paintings of an abstract expressionist named Diebenkorn.
form
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A further example of abstract form which is not mere pattern is Tantric art.
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It is obvious that affective factors are involved even in the most abstract forms of intelligence.
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This is fairly obvious with a relatively abstract form such as a moral code.
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There are formal operational thinkers - those who immediately grasp the abstract form of the problem and solve it quickly and easily.
idea
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In the Introduction to the Principles, Berkeley spends a considerable time arguing against the doctrine of abstract ideas .
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Are they planned in terms of transforming abstract ideas or theories into useful learning experiences?
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How about this for an abstract idea !
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Entrants had to pick one of the four sections and develop their design from the abstract ideas that they found there.
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The abstract idea of the Rechtsstaat must not be set above the values which it is designed to defend.
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All historical writings, even those which deal with complicated and abstract ideas , narrate stories about people and their lives.
level
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In generative phonology, the claim is that, at the abstract level , vowels are simply tense or lax.
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Our point here is that at an abstract level , every organization values pretty much the same things.
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In structuralism, these formal properties are taken at a relatively abstract level .
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At an abstract level , these arguments are probably true.
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People understand - on an abstract level - that education and training are important.
model
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You have already been allowed to enter an abstract model of Pool.
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The abstract models presented in Figure 9. 1 are our starting point for understanding the idea of a political economy.
nature
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Where there is no love to start with, there is nothing of an abstract nature to withhold.
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Nature is the setting but abstract nature; feeling, not representation.
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This chapter will analyse the abstract nature of the search space drawing on relevant aspects of state-space search theory.
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Another kind of stress is of a more abstract nature .
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One reason for this may have lain in the unwillingness of biologists to accept the highly abstract nature of his theory.
noun
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Think about clichés, abstract nouns , adjectives and adverbs.
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We might even discover that he uses a lower number of abstract nouns than other writers of his time.
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Have you used words that are too familiar, worn-out similes, too many abstract nouns ?
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But introducing an abstract noun is not the same thing as providing an explanation.
painter
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But the abstract painters don't want to produce decoration, they want to produce High Art.
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Nadler, a serious abstract painter , displays a small gem at Davis Dominguez.
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The fourth dimension also played a part in uniting a number of abstract painters and sculptors in the inter-war period.
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Sean Scully is one senior abstract painter whose work is both personal and ostentatious.
painting
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Several large abstract paintings shout at her.
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The foyer and staircase are hung with Mondrian-inspired abstract paintings .
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His hatred of abstract painting - even of people like Jackson Pollock and Nicholson.
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A good abstract painting is an experiment I don't have to conduct because some one has done it for me.
pattern
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She saw feet sinking into the thick pile of the new rugs whose abstract patterns evoked the work of contemporary artists.
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A vast, impersonal, abstract pattern stands be-hind this legend.
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This sample illustrates how easy it is to create abstract patterns from familiar objects by using the various options available.
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Industrious Buddhist monks laid out gardens everywhere full of abstract patterns that preceded Picasso by centuries.
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And that tuned in well with my inclinations to look for formal qualities and make more or less abstract patterns out of nature.
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But these themes are always interspersed with more fanciful ones: grimacing masks, weird animals, exuberant abstract patterns .
principle
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Judges present decisions behind the veil of abstract principle which often conceals the naked face of consequentialist considerations of loss distribution.
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But when I became an adult, I began to see the importance of those abstract principles in a personal way.
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But it was never expected that voters would forsake their loyalties in large numbers for an abstract principle .
quality
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There is a somewhat abstract quality about this body which currently operates out of solicitors' premises somewhere in Berkshire.
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In these circumstances such corporate wealth begins to take on an almost abstract quality .
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These figures have an abstract quality , and may not seem to mean much.
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Decibel is the personification of an abstract quality .
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To the Milesians, however, the opposites were not abstract qualities , on a par with numbers, but concrete stuffs.
theory
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They are not merely abstract theory or pious statements of intent that look good posted on the staff notice board.
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The first level was of abstract theory and method; the second was centred upon current policy questions.
thought
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But she had no more time for abstract thoughts .
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Lakoff and several others in his field have demonstrated, how-ever, that nearly all conceptual and abstract thought is structured metaphorically.
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Their ideological development should be viewed as much in terms of this harmonization as in terms of the abstract thought of isolated intellectuals.
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Some say language, others abstract thought , and so on.
way
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The morphologists' interpretation of evolution invoked adaptation only in the most abstract way .
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He even found himself liking the gunman in an abstract way , despite Gomez's future role as his executioner.
work
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Formalist analyses of abstract works proved compelling at first, although they became difficult to sustain.
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What he can do, however, is render remarkable mixed-media abstract works that revel in the auras of his subjects.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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A lot of people don't like abstract art.
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a new exhibition of abstract paintings
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By the age of about seven, children are capable of abstract thought.
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Gorbachev took the abstract idea of reform and made it a reality.
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It's an abstract design that's supposed to represent freedom and strength.
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The photographs put a human face on an abstract political event.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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But vibrant is such an abstract term that it can not be used to describe what to look for in a dough.
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By about 1930 she had ceased painting, though for several more years she made small, colourful, increasingly abstract water-colours.
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In this book, therefore, attention is concentrated on relations of the more abstract sort.
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Nature is the setting but abstract nature; feeling, not representation.
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The abstract graffiti of Aaron Siskind was done first by Weston.
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They begin by challenging the current opinion that all peoples share basic functions of the mind such as logical and abstract abilities.
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To be understood, avoid abstract terms.
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You have already been allowed to enter an abstract model of Pool.
II. noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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A call for papers has been issued and abstracts should be submitted as soon as possible.
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A call for papers has been issued and the deadline for abstracts is 4 May 1992.
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But religion does not reside in theological abstracts.
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Even with abstracts, the theme was, more often than not a Biblical one.
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He came and stood beside me and picked out one of the new abstracts I'd done at home.
III. verb
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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At all levels past the rudimentary, strategies for abstracting meaning from text and imparting meaning into text count for nearly everything.
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Data used to produce the I9X binding profile was abstracted from reference 21.
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Frequently we abstract from this covenant by singling out the Ten Commandments and ignoring much of the remainder of the Mosaic code.
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His movements were slow, his gaze abstracted, as if he were composing a poem in his head.
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It has art's power to translate, to abstract from the circumstances in which it originates.
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Whatever musings had abstracted me from the charms of the city fled before the lucidity of that long-drawn-out instant of disaster.