NOUN (2)

1. the criminal act of capturing and carrying away by force a family member; if a man's wife is abducted it is a crime against the family relationship and against the wife;

2. (physiology) moving of a body part away from the central axis of the body;

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Abduction \Ab*duc"tion\, n. [L. abductio: cf. F. abduction.]
   1. The act of abducing or abducting; a drawing apart; a
      carrying away. --Roget.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. (Physiol.) The movement which separates a limb or other
      part from the axis, or middle line, of the body.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. (Law) The wrongful, and usually the forcible, carrying off
      of a human being; as, the abduction of a child, the
      abduction of an heiress.
      [1913 Webster]

   4. (Logic) A syllogism or form of argument in which the major
      is evident, but the minor is only probable.
      [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

abduction
    n 1: the criminal act of capturing and carrying away by force a
         family member; if a man's wife is abducted it is a crime
         against the family relationship and against the wife
    2: (physiology) moving of a body part away from the central axis
       of the body

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 January 2023):

abduction

    The process of inference to the best explanation.

   "Abduction" is sometimes used to mean just the generation of
   hypotheses to explain observations or conclusionsm, but the
   former definition is more common both in philosophy and
   computing.

   The semantics and the implementation of abduction cannot be
   reduced to those for deduction, as explanation cannot be
   reduced to implication.

   Applications include fault diagnosis, plan formation and
   default reasoning.

   Negation as failure in logic programming can both be given
   an abductive interpretation and also can be used to implement
   abduction.  The abductive semantics of negation as failure
   leads naturally to an argumentation-theoretic interpretation
   of default reasoning in general.

   [Better explanation?  Example?]

   ["Abductive Inference", John R. Josephson
   ].

   (2000-12-07)