Current Events > What does abstract mean?

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My teacher uses the word all the time when saying something like "There is a lot of abstract in this description or book". Not 100% sure what he means by this but I think he's saying it's a poor or hard description in using bad examples, using unrelatable examples or even sometimes the example is too vague. What is CE's take?

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Non-representational stuff that can have many different meanings.

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Well, an abstract is kind of like a short summary of a long academic paper, but that doesn't seem to fit the context here.

If your teacher is saying exactly what you quote, then my guess is that he is not a native speaker of English. Abstract in that context typically would be an adjective, and it needs to be followed by a noun. Abstract what? Abstract thought? Used as a noun (and not an academic summary), it typically is a count noun and not a mass noun. (That usage also is pretty rare. I had to look it up.)

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Google is a thing.

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I applaud my teacher for acknowledging how awful some books and descriptions can be. He uses the school's examples(which are the abstract bullshit) and then he will use his own examples and then a real world example.

People are so ingrained about learning somethings their way, doing things their way that they forget everyone learns differently.

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Sariana21 posted...

Well, an abstract is kind of like a short summary of a long academic paper, but that doesn't seem to fit the context here.

If your teacher is saying exactly what you quote, then my guess is that he is not a native speaker of English. Abstract in that context typically would be an adjective, and it needs to be followed by a noun. Abstract what? Abstract thought? Used as a noun (and not an academic summary), it typically is a count noun and not a mass noun. (That usage also is pretty rare. I had to look it up.)

No he is full fledge American, and I think you might a little too literal and technical on the word.

au_gold posted...

Google is a thing.

Why would I use Google when I have the great CE as my resource? You guys know EVERYTHANG

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It sounds as though you know what he means, then. If he's using the word colloquially, you have to know the context to determine his meaning at that moment.

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