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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

instance.

Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɪnstəns/
  1. Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable
  2. A token; a sign; a symptom or indication.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable
  3. That which is urgent; motive.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable
  4. A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something).

    countable · obsolete · uncountable
  5. An occasion; an order of occurrence.

    countable · uncountable
  6. A case offered as an exemplification or a precedent; an illustrative example.

    countable · uncountable
  7. One of a series of recurring occasions, cases, essentially the same.

    countable · uncountable
  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.

    countable · uncountable
  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.

    countable · uncountable
  10. An individual copy of such a dungeon or other area.

    countable · uncountable
  11. An independent server on a decentralised social network, such as Mastodon.

    Internet · countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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

verb/ˈɪnstəns/
  1. To mention as a case or example; to refer to.

    transitive
  2. To cite an example as proof; to exemplify.

    intransitive
  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.

  4. To render (an object) as part of a batch, using the same geometry data.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

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

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.