Opposite of verb "abstract" and noun "abstraction"

Question

The opposite of abstract (adj) is concrete, but what are the opposites of other forms of the word abstract, such as:

abstract (v) - E.g.: We can abstract away the implementation details.
abstraction (n) - E.g.: I will provide an abstraction to simplify this.

I'm interested in this from a computer science perspective. Abstraction is an important concept and I often find myself needing the opposite when explaining/modeling something. I'm currently using implement and implementation, but I feel this isn't quite correct.

score 9 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 20 '11 at 18:30

9

You may also consider TO REIFY and REIFICATION. Broadly speaking it means "to make real". (See http://www.thefreedictionary.com/reify).

Reification has a specific meaning in computer science as "the process by which an abstract idea about a computer program is turned into an explicit data model or other object" (quoting Wikipedia). You may wish to read the Wikipedia article.

edited Nov 20 '11 at 18:30

Hugo

67,535

answered Oct 07 '11 at 18:30

Neal

91

Fascinating! Wasn't aware of that one at all... thanks! – devios1 Oct 12 '11 at 18:42

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

5

American Heritage has concretize, but specify came to my mind.

concretize To make real or specific.

specify To state explicitly or in detail.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

Community

1

answered May 02 '11 at 16:25

Callithumpian

24,764

Any thoughts on what the "concretize" form of "abstraction" would be... concretization I suppose? – devios1 May 02 '11 at 17:44
5

@chaiguy: Concretization: Scrabble score—27, Mouthfeel score—0. – Callithumpian May 02 '11 at 18:43

PSU · Answer 3 · 2011-05-02T18:08:40.827

Strictly in the Computer Science realm, we use "concrete" as the opposite of "abstract" as adjectives. You cannot instantiate (make one of) an abstract class; you can instantiate a concrete class. So "instantiation" probably comes close to the noun, and "instantiate" comes close to the verb. Purely in terms of taxonomy, you could use "generalization/generalize" when going up a class heirarchy towards the more abstract ("vehicle" is a generalization of "car") and "specialization/specialize" going the other way.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 02 '11 at 16:24

1

Implement may be a good choice:

We can implement the details.

Another choice is flesh out:

We can flesh out the implementation details.

Or you can use both:

I will provide an implementation to flesh this out.

Fill out can also work instead of flesh out. As well, the verb form of detail can be used:

I will provide an implementation to detail this.

answered May 02 '11 at 16:24

Matthew Read

3,345

1

This is what I'm currently using; good to know it at least makes sense to someone else. :) – devios1 May 02 '11 at 16:26
The term "expand" is used in mathematics. For instance "The Taylor Expansion". "Decompression" too. Abstraction can be thought of as a form of compression. See Juergen Schmidhuber's papers. – Conor Sep 25 '19 at 11:10

Opposite of verb "abstract" and noun "abstraction"

4 Answers4