How to Use abstraction in a Sentence

abstraction

noun
  • She gazed out the window in abstraction.
  • Klee opened up for me not just the world of abstraction, but the world of art.
    — Lance Esplund, WSJ, 23 Nov. 2018
  • From that deck, Iran is not an abstraction.
    — Shawn Vandiver, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Mar. 2026
  • These aren’t abstractions to you.
    — Mark Hughes, Forbes.com, 19 June 2026
  • But that was an abstraction that wouldn’t work in live action.
    — Bill Desowitz, IndieWire, 7 June 2025
  • These make sense in the world they're set in, with little abstraction.
    — Chuong Nguyen and Samuel Axon, Ars Technica, 24 Mar. 2023
  • But in opera, a score isn’t just free-floating abstraction.
    — Theater Critic, San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Feb. 2026
  • The plan was robust — but buried in abstraction.
    — Vibhas Ratanjee, Forbes.com, 14 Aug. 2025
  • Those deaths are not abstractions, and those who vote to bring them about must be held to account.
    — Paul Waldman, The Denver Post, 5 May 2017
  • The idea of colds as a little trial for the soul is an abstraction.
    — Addison Del Mastro, The Week, 16 Feb. 2022
  • But in those days, one had to love for the sake of some abstraction, against the backdrop of it.
    — Sarah Vitali, Harper's magazine, 10 May 2019
  • American art was swept up in the post-war rage for abstraction.
    — Washington Post, 30 Mar. 2022
  • In the middle of the map, climate change can feel like an abstraction.
    — Pam Mandel, Longreads, 20 June 2017
  • For most of us, the intense drought that is gripping most of the state is an abstraction.
    — Robert Gehrke, The Salt Lake Tribune, 28 May 2021
  • And they were made in the 1960s, a time when abstraction reigned.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 21 May 2021
  • Yorke had drawn a lyrical abstraction.
    — Zoe Si, New Yorker, 19 Dec. 2025
  • But this new area of research gives her a way to bring that high level of abstraction back down to earth.
    — Joseph Howlett, Quanta Magazine, 26 Sep. 2025
  • Our neighbors — and the rest of the world — become abstractions.
    — Jim Beckerman, USA TODAY, 26 Oct. 2019
  • Some of these abstractions are more evocative than others.
    — H.d. Angel, Pitchfork, 6 Feb. 2026
  • But the sum total of its gliding abstractions is a mite brainless.
    — Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 7 Sep. 2017
  • But spending hundreds and billions for an abstraction is hard to sell.
    — New Atlas, 15 Feb. 2026
  • Artists in Congo tend to deal with real life, rather than abstractions.
    — The Economist, 14 Sep. 2017
  • At the same time, the patterns, the textures, and the jostling forms pull us into abstraction.
    — Cate McQuaid, BostonGlobe.com, 23 May 2018
  • Many of those scenes, as a result, are near-abstractions that still tell a pivotal part of the story.
    — Christopher Bonanos, Curbed, 23 Oct. 2025
  • The reader is meant to fill those abstractions—what injustice is?
    — Craig Morgan Teicher, Literary Hub, 1 June 2026
  • For most of us, this was how the crisis was viewed — from the abstraction of space, a mutation of the map.
    — Henry Wismayer, Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2022
  • For most of us, this was how the crisis was viewed - from the abstraction of space, a mutation of the map.
    — Henry Wismayer, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Aug. 2022
  • My patients were not abstractions.
    — Frances Mei Hardin, Sun Sentinel, 14 May 2026
  • Either way, abstraction wins out.
    — Hannah Gold, New Yorker, 17 June 2026
  • There’s a sweetness in living in dreams and abstractions, but there’s a joy in living in your own body, too.
    — Claire Comstock-Gay, The Cut, 18 Sep. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'abstraction.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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