What's the difference between abstract and obscure?

Abstract


Definition:

  • (a.) Withdraw; separate.
  • (a.) Considered apart from any application to a particular object; separated from matter; existing in the mind only; as, abstract truth, abstract numbers. Hence: ideal; abstruse; difficult.
  • (a.) Expressing a particular property of an object viewed apart from the other properties which constitute it; -- opposed to concrete; as, honesty is an abstract word.
  • (a.) Resulting from the mental faculty of abstraction; general as opposed to particular; as, "reptile" is an abstract or general name.
  • (a.) Abstracted; absent in mind.
  • (a.) To withdraw; to separate; to take away.
  • (a.) To draw off in respect to interest or attention; as, his was wholly abstracted by other objects.
  • (a.) To separate, as ideas, by the operation of the mind; to consider by itself; to contemplate separately, as a quality or attribute.
  • (a.) To epitomize; to abridge.
  • (a.) To take secretly or dishonestly; to purloin; as, to abstract goods from a parcel, or money from a till.
  • (a.) To separate, as the more volatile or soluble parts of a substance, by distillation or other chemical processes. In this sense extract is now more generally used.
  • (v. t.) To perform the process of abstraction.
  • (a.) That which comprises or concentrates in itself the essential qualities of a larger thing or of several things. Specifically: A summary or an epitome, as of a treatise or book, or of a statement; a brief.
  • (a.) A state of separation from other things; as, to consider a subject in the abstract, or apart from other associated things.
  • (a.) An abstract term.
  • (a.) A powdered solid extract of a vegetable substance mixed with sugar of milk in such proportion that one part of the abstract represents two parts of the original substance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For dipeptides containing the amino terminal residues glycine, alanine and phenylalanine, abstraction of the hydrogen from the carbon adjacent to the peptide nitrogen was the major process leading to the spin-adducts.
  • (2) The death certificates were abstracted; all deaths under age 60 and a 20% sample of deaths 60 and older were examined.
  • (3) They are most commonly described as conduct disordered and hyperactive, appear heir to a variety of deficits in verbal and abstract cognition, and perform more poorly in the academic environment.
  • (4) Actin also exhibited a clear dual wave pattern of transport that coincided well with that of tubulin, indicating that both actin and tubulin were the major components of both groups IV and V.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
  • (5) A mathematical model that abstracts the major features of the vegetative life cycle of Neurosopra crassa has been developed, and the action of selection in this model and various extensions of it is such as to maintain polymorphisms of vegetative incompatibility factors.
  • (6) Scott insisted he was an abstract painter in the way he felt Chardin was too: the pans and fruit were uninteresting in themselves; they were merely "the means of making a picture", which was a study in space, form and colour.
  • (7) Neuropsychological functioning in 90 male and female alcoholics and 65 peer controls was examined using both accuracy and time measures for four basic types of neuropsychological functioning: verbal skills, learning and memory, problem-solving and abstracting, and perceptual-motor skills.
  • (8) 131 cases of the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) among infants born in the Municipality of Copenhagen during 1956--1971 were analysed on the basis of data collected prospectively by the infant health visitors and abstracted from police reports.
  • (9) Case abstract data are routinely collected by hospital abstracting services, peer review organizations, and some state agencies.
  • (10) 260, 9265-9271] and possibly electron abstraction-water addition.
  • (11) All 546 patients were surveyed prospectively, using the Health Assessment Questionnaire and information abstracted from hospital records.
  • (12) From the patients' performance we make the following theoretical claims: that some arithmetic facts are stored in the form of individual fact representations (e.g., 9 x 4 = 36), whereas other facts are stored in the form of a general rule (e.g., 0 x N = 0); that arithmetic fact retrieval is mediated by abstract internal representations that are independent of the form in which problems are presented or responses are given; that arithmetic facts and calculation procedures are functionally independent; and that calculation algorithms may include special-case procedures that function to increase the speed or efficiency of problem solving.
  • (13) Narrow paths weave among moss-covered ornate arches and towers on the 80-acre site, and huge abstract sculptures and staircases lead nowhere, but up to the sky.
  • (14) On the basis of information abstracted from case histories, 41 patients who had experienced epileptic seizures thought to be due either to treatment with psychiatric drugs or to withdrawal from sedative drugs were compared with a control group of patients.
  • (15) 11 (suppl 14) 331 (abstract)] [14] also indicates that sensitivity to 4-HC can be used to distinguish primitive progenitor cells from committed progenitor cells.
  • (16) Although these differences in kinetics suggest differences in control mechanism(s), the absence of I and T on the surface of NaCl-grown cells suggests that there is also a common regulatory link among H, S and L.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
  • (17) This is an important precedent, because hydrogen abstraction from carbon-10 is a critical step in the lipoxygenase-catalyzed synthesis of 8- and 12-hydroperoxy-eicosatetraenoates (HPETEs) and for the conversion of 5- and 15-HPETEs to leukotrienes.
  • (18) The correlations between Inability to Abstract and Autism before and after those scales that contributed significantly to the Rs had been partialed out also were calculated.
  • (19) For example, population spikes of "short" latency (3-4 or 4-5 ms, depending on the animal) exhibited only facilitation in response to interstimulus intervals of 1-4 ms.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
  • (20) The inward current caused by nicotine was unaffected by intracellular GTP gamma S.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Obscure


Definition:

  • (superl.) Covered over, shaded, or darkened; destitute of light; imperfectly illuminated; dusky; dim.
  • (superl.) Of or pertaining to darkness or night; inconspicuous to the sight; indistinctly seen; hidden; retired; remote from observation; unnoticed.
  • (superl.) Not noticeable; humble; mean.
  • (superl.) Not easily understood; not clear or legible; abstruse or blind; as, an obscure passage or inscription.
  • (superl.) Not clear, full, or distinct; clouded; imperfect; as, an obscure view of remote objects.
  • (a.) To render obscure; to darken; to make dim; to keep in the dark; to hide; to make less visible, intelligible, legible, glorious, beautiful, or illustrious.
  • (v. i.) To conceal one's self; to hide; to keep dark.
  • (n.) Obscurity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This diagnosis was obscured by the absence of cutaneous, oropharyngeal, and respiratory involvement.
  • (2) The mechanism of ACTH action on brain catecholamine metabolism is still obscure, however, an increased release of the NA to ACTH peptides is very likely in the light of the present observations.
  • (3) However, peptide bonds between 193 and 194, and 194 and 195 were cleaved in the presence of mAb 1C3 as easily as in the presence of mAb 31A4, suggesting that the region of residues 200 to 202 was obscured by, or within the antibody binding site, but that the region of residues 193 to 195 was not.
  • (4) The physician's approach to the differential diagnosis of obscure, atypical pneumonias has changed.
  • (5) The thigh and hip manifestations can obscure the primary intra-abdominal process either due to the obvious emphysema or to the obtunded abdominal signs secondary to associated neuropathy.
  • (6) While tonic pupil and reduced sweating can be attributed to the affection of postganglionic cholinergic parasympathetic and sympathetic fibres projecting to the iris and sweat glands, respectively, the pathogenesis of diminished or lost tendon jerks remains obscure.
  • (7) It is found that generic averages obscure some rather substantial differences at the species level for both Cercopithecus and Cercocebus.
  • (8) Although the pathophysiology of the pancreatic injury is obscure, the lack of other etiological factors and temporal association of the pancreatitis with acetaminophen-induced hepatic and renal toxicity suggest a causal relationship.
  • (9) Because reticulocytes contain a pool of uncombined alpha chains which might have obscured the demonstration of an alpha chain-dependent mechanism for beta-chain synthesis, subsequent studies were done with bone marrow cells.
  • (10) However, the mechanism by which Ag II is able to modulate anterior pituitary secretion still remains obscure.
  • (11) Other causes were 20 (13%) with cerebrovascular diseases, 30 (20%) hepatic failure and 11 (8%) were of miscellaneous and obscure causes.
  • (12) In such a case with a large hematoma, the presence of a tumor may be obscured on CT scan and angiography.
  • (13) However, the difficulty still remains that the latter may be obscured by differences not related to thermostability etc.
  • (14) The activating mechanism of the condition still remains obscure.
  • (15) Its language is “archaic and obscure”, the commission says.
  • (16) Clofibrate, an antilipidemic drug that acts by a still obscure mechanism, is known to specifically increase up to 30-fold the activity of the hepatic cytochrome P-450 isozyme that omega-hydroxlates lauric acid.
  • (17) On the electron microscopy, the sarcomere was shortened and Z-line was partly obscure.
  • (18) Photographs of 82 boys from the Harpenden Growth Study were measured at ages 5 to 18 years, in an order that obscured which photographs were of the same boy at different ages.
  • (19) Although the K+ concentration of the contents of the GI tract as well as the K+ transport by the portal vein were increased, the source of the excess K+ remains obscure.
  • (20) The effects of long-term exposure of humans to formaldehyde, however, are more obscure.