From Latin 'abstrahere' — literally 'drawn away' from the concrete, a metaphor that spans art and philosophy.
Existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence (adjective); a summary of a text, or a work of abstract art (noun); to draw away, to remove, or to summarize (verb).
From Latin 'abstractus,' past participle of 'abstrahere' (to draw away, to drag away, to detach), from 'abs-' (away from) + 'trahere' (to draw, to pull), from PIE *dʰregʰ- (to drag, to pull). The philosophical sense of 'withdrawn from material reality' developed in medieval Latin scholastic writing, where 'abstractus' described concepts separated from their physical instances. The artistic sense of 'non-representational' dates from the early 20th century. The root *dʰregʰ- also produced English 'drag' and 'draw' through Proto-Germanic *draganan, as well as Latin 'tractus' (a drawing out, a tract of land). The semantic journey from physically pulling something away to mentally isolating a concept from its particulars is one of philosophy's foundational metaphors — thinking itself conceived as a kind of extraction. Key roots: trahere (Latin: "to draw, to pull, to drag"), abs- (ab-) (Latin: "away from, off"), *tragh- (Proto-Indo-European: "to draw, to drag").
The term 'abstract' in academic papers (a brief summary at the beginning) preserves the word's original Latin sense perfectly: the abstract is literally 'drawn away' from the full text — a concentrated essence separated from the whole, like an extract of the argument.