Instance vs. Entity

By Jaxson

  • Entity

    An entity is anything that claims independent existence (as opposed to merely being part of a whole), whether as a subject or as an object, actually or potentially, concretely or abstractly.

    The term is broad in scope and may refer to animals; natural features like mountains; inanimate objects like tables; abstractions like numbers or sets; human contrivances like laws, corporations and academic disciplines; or supernatural beings like Gods and spirits.

    The adjectival form is entitative and refers to something considered in its own right.

Wikipedia
  • Instance (noun)

    Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence. 14th-19th c.

  • Instance (noun)

    A token; a sign; a symptom or indication.

    “It sends some precious instance of itself/ After the thing it loves. Hamlet IV. v. ca. 1602”

  • Instance (noun)

    That which is urgent; motive.

  • Instance (noun)

    Occasion; order of occurrence.

  • Instance (noun)

    A case offered as an exemplification or a precedent; an illustrative example. from 16th c.

  • Instance (noun)

    One of a series of recurring occasions, cases, essentially the same.

  • Instance (noun)

    A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something). 16th-18th c.

  • Instance (noun)

    In object-oriented programming: a created object, one that has had memory allocated for local data storage; an instantiation of a class. from 20th c.

  • Instance (noun)

    A dungeon or other area that is duplicated for each player, or each party of players, that enters it, so that each player or party has a private copy of the area, isolated from other players.

  • Instance (noun)

    An individual copy of such a dungeon or other area.

  • Instance (verb)

    To mention as a case or example; to refer to; to cite

    “to instance a fact”

  • Instance (verb)

    To cite an example as proof; to exemplify.

  • Entity (noun)

    That which has a distinct existence as an individual unit. Often used for organisations which have no physical form.

  • Entity (noun)

    The existence of something considered apart from its properties.

  • Entity (noun)

    Anything about which information or data can be stored in a database; in particular, an organised array or set of individual elements or parts.

  • Entity (noun)

    The state or quality of being or existence.

    “The group successfully maintains its tribal entity.”

Wiktionary
  • Entity (noun)

    a thing with distinct and independent existence

    “Church and empire were fused in a single entity”

  • Entity (noun)

    existence; being

    “entity and nonentity”

Oxford Dictionary
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