instance

Borrowed from Middle French instance, from Latin īnstantia (“a being near, presence, also perseverance, earnestness, importunity, urgency”), from īnstāns (“urgent”); see instant.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈɪnstəns/

Noun

instance (countable and uncountable, plural instances)

(obsolete) Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence. [14th–19th c.]
(obsolete) A token; a sign; a symptom or indication.
(obsolete) That which is urgent; motive.
(obsolete) A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something). [16th–18th c.]
Occasion; order of occurrence.
A case offered as an exemplification or a precedent; an illustrative example. [from 16th c.]
One of a series of recurring occasions, cases, essentially the same.
(computing) A specific occurrence of something that is created or instantiated, such as a database, or an object of a class in object-orientedprogramming. [from 20th c.]
(massively multiplayer online games) 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.
(massively multiplayer online games) An individual copy of such a dungeon or other area.
(Internet) An independent server on a decentralised social network, such as Mastodon.