abstract
Researchers abstract abstract ideas from complex theories.
The sentence indicates that scientists derive theoretical concepts from intricate frameworks.
Meanings
to extract, summarize, or remove; to consider apart from concrete instances
- The journalist abstracted the key points from the report.
- Mathematicians abstract patterns from specific examples to form general theorems.
existing in thought or as an idea but not having concrete or physical form; theoretical rather than applied
- Mathematical proofs deal with abstract concepts.
- Her abstract paintings explore color and emotion rather than recognizable forms.
Word origin
From Latin abstractus, past participle of abstrahere ('to draw away'), formed from abs- ('away from') + trahere ('to draw, pull'). Both verb and adjective senses descend from the same Latin source; the pronunciation difference is purely a stress-shift phenomenon in modern English, with end-stress on the verb and front-stress on the adjective and noun.
Fun fact
The verb-versus-adjective stress shift in 'abstract' is part of a productive English pattern called the trochaic noun rule, which gives verbs end-stress and corresponding nouns or adjectives front-stress — the same pattern produces 'record/record', 'present/present', 'conduct/conduct', and dozens of others.