Concrete

Dictionary Definition

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From Oxford English Dictionary ¹

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  1. 
     

     1. United or connected by growth; grown together. (obsolete)
     2. Continuous. In Acoustics applied to a sound or movement of the voice sliding continuously up or down; distinguished from discrete movement.
  2. Made up or compounded of various elements or ingredients; composite, compound. (obsolete)
  3. Formed by union or cohesion of particles into a mass; congealed, coagulated, solidified; solid (as opposed to fluid).

  4. 
     

     1. Applied by the early logicians and grammarians to a quality viewed (as it is actually found) concreted or adherent to a substance, and so to the word expressing a quality so considered, viz. the adjective, in contradistinction to the quality as mentally abstracted or withdrawn from substance and expressed by an abstract noun: thus white (paper, hat, horse) is the concrete quality or quality in the concrete, whiteness, the abstract quality or quality in the abstract; seven (men, days, etc.) is a concrete number, as opposed to the number 7 in the abstract. concrete science (science n. 4b). Afterwards concrete was extended also to substantives involving attributes, as fool, sage, hero, and has finally been applied by some grammarians to all substantives not abstract, i.e. all those denoting ‘things’ as distinguished from qualities, states, and actions. The logical and grammatical uses have thus tended to fall asunder and even to become contradictory; some writers on Logic therefore disuse the term concrete entirely: see quot. 1887. In this Dictionary, concr. is prefixed to those senses in which substantives originally abstract come to be used as names of ‘things’; e.g. crossing vbl. n., i.e. abstract noun of action, concr. a crossing in a street, on a railway, etc. From an early period used as a quasi-n., a concrete (sc. term).
     2. concrete universal n. [universal adj. 1] Philos. the individual, when regarded as something maintaining its identity through qualitative change or diversity, or as a unity or system or class of separate but identical particulars. Also transf.
  5. Hence, generally, Combined with, or embodied in matter, actual practice, or a particular example; existing in a material form or as an actual reality, or pertaining to that which so exists. Opposed to abstract. (The ordinary current sense.) Absolutely, the concrete, that which is concrete; in the concrete, in the sphere of concrete reality, concretely.
  6. Made of concrete.

  7. 
     

     1. concrete music n. [translating French musique concrète] a form of music constructed by the arrangement of various recorded sounds into a sequence. (Also with first word in French form concrète.)
     2. concrete poetry n. a form of poetry in which the significance and the effect required depend to a larger degree than usual upon the physical shape or pattern of the printed material. Also ellipt. concrete. Hence concretist, concrete poem, concrete poet, etc.The term was coined independently and almost simultaneously in Brazil and Germany: in Brazil (poesia concreta) by the Noigandres group of poets; in Germany (die konkrete Dichtung) by Eugen Gomringer. The usage was formally adopted at a meeting in 1955 between the two originators.

Committee Definition

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Domain Specific Usage

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concrete model: A model in which a t least one component represented is a tangible object; for example, a physical replica of a building.²

Concrete models are real, physical objects that are intended to stand in representational relationship to some real or imagined system, set of systems, or generalized phenomenon. ³

Notes & Discussions

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References