“Abstract concepts just don’t land”

An abstract term is a summary of examples. You understand 'ratio' or 'irony' because you have met hundreds of cases, and the definition names what they share. Your students hear the summary before they have met anything it summarises, so the words find nothing to attach to, and a definition full of other new terms is hard to hold in mind. Nobody here is being lazy or slow. You lead with the definition because that is how the subject is arranged in your head; a student meeting it for the first time needs the opposite order.

It persists because defining first feels like proper teaching: it matches the textbook, and students can repeat a definition long before they can use it, which looks like progress to everyone. When it fails, the natural repair is the same definition again, more slowly, which gives the words nothing new to attach to. The techniques below come at it from two directions: some build the concept from concrete cases and deliberate near misses, so the definition arrives with something to name, and some pair the words with a picture that carries part of the load.