Word: instance Part of Speech: noun Etymology: Borrowed from Middle French instance, from Latin īnstantia (“a being near, presence, also perseverance, earnestness, importunity, urgency”), from īnstāns (“urgent”); see instant. Pronunciation: /ˈɪnstəns/ 1. Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence. Labels: countable, obsolete, uncountable Example: I know one very well alied, to whom, at the instance of a brother of his[…], I spake to that purpose[…]. Example: […]undertook at her instance to restore them. 2. A token; a sign; a symptom or indication. Labels: countable, obsolete, uncountable Example: It sends some precious instance of itself/ After the thing it loves. 3. That which is urgent; motive. Labels: countable, obsolete, uncountable Example: The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. 4. A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something). Labels: countable, obsolete, uncountable Example: 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 […] 5. An occasion; an order of occurrence. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: 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 Times. 6. A case offered as an exemplification or a precedent; an illustrative example. Labels: countable, uncountable 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 Example: 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. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: One's own death is an 'accidental' event, simply another instance of the general rule that human beings die. Example: If you choose to drink again the best way to avoid another instance of withdrawal is to avoid drinking two days in a row. 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. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: Some compilers will allow statics to be inlined, but then incorrectly create multiple instances of the inlined variable at run-time. 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. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: As long as the most difficult instance you've tried is Gnomeregan, you're never going to be credible talking about 'difficult encounters'. Example: 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. 10. An individual copy of such a dungeon or other area. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: The instance is created for the group that enters it. Example: As soon as the first player enters (spawns) a new instance, it appears that the loottable is somehow chosen. 11. An independent server on a decentralised social network, such as Mastodon. Labels: Internet, countable, uncountable Example: 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. Example: 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.