The Oxford Thesaurus An A-Z Dictionary of Synonyms - abstractadj.

1) theoretical, unapplied, notional, ideational, conceptual, metaphysical, unpractical, intellectual: It is difficult to capture abstract ideas on paper. 2) non-representational, symbolic, non-realistic: Museums began buying abstract art in the 1930s. --n. 3) summary, epitome, synopsis, essence, digest, condensation, survey, conspectus, extract; outline, pr‚cis, r‚sum‚: By reading the abstracts, you can determine which articles merit reading in full. --v. 4) epitomize, abbreviate, digest, summarize, condense, shorten, abridge, cut, cut down, US synopsize: The service abstracts articles that appear in scientific journals.