Word.ws English Dictionary

instance

/ˈɪnstəns/

instance noun: urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence.

Noun

instance (countable and uncountable, plural instances)

  1. (obsolete) Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence.
    • I know one very well alied, to whom, at the instance of a brother of his[…], I spake to that purpose[…].1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 8, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
    • […]undertook at her instance to restore them.1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London...
  2. (obsolete) A token; a sign; a symptom or indication.
    • It sends some precious instance of itself/ After the thing it loves.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
  3. (obsolete) That which is urgent; motive.
    • The instances that second marriage move
      Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
  4. (obsolete) A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something).
    • The reason that I gather he is mad, Besides this present instance of his rage, Is a mad tale he told to day at dinner […]c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
  5. An occasion; an order of occurrence.
    • The Statutes, or Acts of Parliament themſelves. Theſe ſeem, as if in the Time of Edw[ard] I. they were drawn up into the Form of a Law in the firſt Inſtance, and ſo aſſented to by both Houſes, and the King, as may appear by the very Obſervation of the Contexture and Fabrick of the Statutes of thoſe...1713, [Matthew Hale], “Concerning the Distribution of the Laws of England into Common Law, and Statute Law. And First, Concerning the Statute Law, or Acts of Parliament.”, in The History of the...
  6. A case offered as an exemplification or a precedent; an illustrative example.
    • August 30, 1706, Francis Atterbury, a sermon preach'd in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, at the funeral of Mr. Tho. Bennet
      most remarkable instances of suffering
    • sometimes we love those that are absent, saith Philostratus, and gives instance in his friend Athenodorus, that loved a maid at Corinth whom he never saw […]
  7. One of a series of recurring occasions, cases, essentially the same.
    • One's own death is an 'accidental' event, simply another instance of the general rule that human beings die.2006, Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference Between 'someone' and 'something', page 115
    • If you choose to drink again the best way to avoid another instance of withdrawal is to avoid drinking two days in a row.2010, Kenneth Anderson, How to Change Your Drinking: a Harm Reduction Guide to Alcohol, page 59
  8. A specific occurrence of something that is created or instantiated, such as a database, or an object of a class in object-oriented programming.
    • Some compilers will allow statics to be inlined, but then incorrectly create multiple instances of the inlined variable at run-time.2000, Dov Bulka, David Mayhew, Efficient C++: Performance Programming Techniques, page 149
  9. 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.
    • As long as the most difficult instance you've tried is Gnomeregan, you're never going to be credible talking about 'difficult encounters'.2006 September 1, Dan, “Re: DPS Classes: Why should I heal you?”, in alt.games.warcraft (Usenet)
    • For example, when a team of five players enters the Sunken Temple instance in World of Warcraft, they will battle many monsters, but they will not encounter other players even though several teams of players may be experiencing the Sunken Temple at the same time.2010, William Sims Bainbridge, Online Multiplayer Games, Morgan & Claypool, →ISBN, page 26
  10. An individual copy of such a dungeon or other area.
    • The instance is created for the group that enters it.2005 January 11, Patrick B., “Re: Instance dungeons”, in alt.games.warcraft (Usenet)
    • As soon as the first player enters (spawns) a new instance, it appears that the loottable is somehow chosen.2005 December 6, Rene, “Re: Does group leader affect drops?”, in alt.games.warcraft (Usenet)
  11. (Internet) An independent server on a decentralised social network, such as Mastodon.
    • To collect the messages, we select the mstdn.jp as the target instance. The mstdn.jp is one of the major Mastodon instances that has 123,331 users and connects to the 2415 other instances at 26 Feb 2017.2017, Masaki Kohana et al., “A Topic Trend on P2P Based Social Media”, in Leonard Barolli, Makoto Takizawa, Tomoya Enokido, editors, Advances in Network-Based Information Systems: The 20th...
    • In a poll I conducted on Mastodon, 42% of the 674 respondents said that they had reported something, whether it had been a spam account or hateful content, to their instance's moderator.2022, Derek Caelin, “Decentralized Networks vs The Trolls”, in Hoda Mahmoudi, Kate Seaman, Michael H. Allen, editors, Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity, page...

Verb

instance (third-person singular simple present instances, present participle instancing, simple past and past participle instanced)

  1. (transitive) To mention as a case or example; to refer to.
    • Near-synonyms: adduce, cite
    • The reason why so many fallacious opinions have passed into proverbs is owing to that carelessness which makes the individual instance the general rule.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 93
    Synonyms:
    adduce, cite
  2. (intransitive) To cite an example as proof; to exemplify.
  3. To duplicate (a dungeon or other area) 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.
    • In these games, such as World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, most significant PvP happens inside instanced or player-capped areas.2010 April 1, Scott F. Andrews, The Guild Leader's Handbook: Strategies and Guidance from a Battle-Scarred MMO Veteran, No Starch Press, →ISBN, page 124
    • This is an improvement compared to contemporary MMORPG which combine zoning and instancing, whereas replication is currently not available for a combination with either of them. Zoning (Cai, Xavier, Turner, & Lee, 2002; Macedonia, Zyda,[…]2012 May 31, Ashok Kumar, Algorithmic and Architectural Gaming Design: Implementation and Development: Implementation and Development, IGI Global, →ISBN, page 302
  4. (transitive) To render (an object) as part of a batch, using the same geometry data.

instance meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu

instance in Tamil

எடுத்துக்காட்டு, சான்று, சான்று நிகழ்வு, நிகழ்ச்சி, நிகழ்வு நேர்வு சந்தர்ப்பம், நேரம் எடுத்துக்காட்டு

instance in Urdu

موقع, مثال, سماجت, واقعہ

instance in Bengali

উদাহরণ, ঘটনা, নজির, নিদর্শন, উপলক্ষ, সঙ্ঘটন

instance in Telugu

to instance, mention
ఉదాహరించు udāhariñcu
More languagesFewer languages
instance in Malayalam
ഉരു uru
instance in Kannada
ಎತ್ತುಗೆ, ಮೆಟ್ಟಲು, ಸಂದರ್ಭ, ಪ್ರಸಂಗ
instance in Sanskrit
उदाहरण udāharaṇa
instance in Nepali
इन्स्ट्यान्स

Examples of instance in a sentence

  • The organisations claim fraudsters are targeting properties belonging to both individuals and companies, in some instances using forged documents.2010 October 11, Mark King, “Homeowners warned to be vigilant as identity and registration fraud rises”, in The Guardian:
  • Beating a difficult instance becomes second nature after running through it…a few times, with good leaders knowing exactly what to do and how to co-ordinate member actions.2012, anonymous gamer quoted in Andrew Ee & Hichang Cho, "What Makes an MMORPG Leader? A Social Cognitive Theory-Based Approach to...
  • A castle on the eastern edge of the island spawns a new instance whenever a party of players enters.2010, Anthony Steed, Manuel Fradinho Oliveira, Networked Graphics: Building Networked Games and Virtual Environments, Elsevier, →ISBN, page...
  • Every Mastodon instance (neighborhood) has a code of conduct that you have to agree to before you join (move in).2023, Chris Minnick, Michael McCallister, Mastodon for Dummies, page 14:

All 40 example sentences with instance

Synonyms of instance

Antonyms

Forms of instance

Noun
pluralinstances
alternative formenstaunce
alternative forminstaunce
Verb
third-person singular presentinstances
present participleinstancing
past participleinstanced
pastinstanced

Plural of instance: instances

Origin of instance

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

Words formed from instance

Phrases with instance

Questions about instance

What does instance mean?
Instance means urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence.
What is instance in Tamil?
Instance in Tamil is எடுத்துக்காட்டு, சான்று, சான்று நிகழ்வு. See Instance meaning in Tamil.
How do you use instance in a sentence?
The organisations claim fraudsters are targeting properties belonging to both individuals and companies, in some instances using forged documents.
What part of speech is instance?
Instance can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce instance?
Instance is pronounced /ˈɪnstəns/.
What is the plural of instance?
The plural of instance is instances.

Words near instance in the dictionary

  1. instamped
  2. instamping
  3. instamps
  4. Instamum
  5. Instamums
  6. instance
  7. instance in
  8. instance variable
  9. instance variables
  10. instance-based programming
  11. instanced

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: instance (page history and authors); instance (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); instance (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); instance (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ఉదాహరించు (Telugu) (page history and authors); ഉരു (Malayalam) (page history and authors); instance (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); instance (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-instance.ogg.

Cite this entry: “instance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/instance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.