The practice of refactoring a portion of code to raise the level of abstraction to a more suitable level for the problem at hand. 

The result is a code base that is easier to understand and maintain. 

Related patterns: -
  FacadePattern is used to wrap an entity in a higher-order abstraction
  ExtractMethod a facade for multiple statements achieving a cohesive step

-- RussFreeman 
----
CategoryAbstraction