instance

Etymology

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

noun

1. (obsolete) Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence.
   It was settled, as long ago as the first Congress, at the instance of Madison, then in the Senate, and by the deciding vote of John Adams, then Vice-President, that even where the advice and consent of the Senate was necessary to the appointment of an officer, the President had the absolute power to remove him without consulting the Senate. 1916, William Howard Taft, Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers, New York: Columbia University Press, →OCLC, →OL, page 56
2. (obsolete) A token; a sign; a symptom or indication.
3. (obsolete) That which is urgent; motive.
4. (obsolete) A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something).
5. Occasion; order of occurrence.
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
   The organisations claim fraudsters are targeting properties belonging to both individuals and companies, in some instances using forged documents. 11 Oct 2010, Mark King, “Homeowners warned to be vigilant as identity and registration fraud rises”, in The Guardian
8. (computing) 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. (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.
   As long as the most difficult instance you've tried is Gnomeregan, you're never going to be credible talking about 'difficult encounters'. September 1 2006, 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, page 26
   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 Understanding the Formation of Leadership Capabilities in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games", Eludamos, volume 6, page 31
10. (massively multiplayer online games) An individual copy of such a dungeon or other area.
    The instance is created for the group that enters it. January 11 2005, 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. December 6 2005, Rene, “Re: Does group leader affect drops?”, in alt.games.warcraft (Usenet)
    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, page 398
11. (Internet) An independent server on the decentralised social network 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 International Conference on Network-Based Information Systems (NBiS-2017), page 1140
    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 157
    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

verb

1. (transitive) To mention as a case or example; to refer to; to cite
   District Veterinary Surgeon Hutchinson's report from Newcastle is again worthy of notice, as instancing the difficulty of suppression of contagious disease under the disturbed conditions now existing in the northern part of the Colony. April 12, 1901, “Veterinary Departmental Report for February, 1901”, in The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record, volume 4, number 3, page 87
   The poems which I have instanced are concrete and relatively glaring examples of the intangible difference which the change of language made in Rilke's visions . 1946, E. M. Butler, Rainer Maria Rilke, page 404
2. (intransitive) To cite an example as proof; to exemplify.
3. (massively multiplayer online games) 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. 2010-04-01, Scott F. Andrews, The Guild Leader's Handbook: Strategies and Guidance from a Battle-Scarred MMO Veteran, No Starch Press, 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,[…] 2012-05-31, Ashok Kumar, Algorithmic and Architectural Gaming Design: Implementation and Development: Implementation and Development, IGI Global, page 302
   Instanced encounters standard in today's MMORPGs, but the lack of instancing in early EverQuest meant that the guild (a team of players operating as a team) or group(s) of players who raced to and engaged a target first could claim the[…] 2021-05-24, Mark J. P. Wolf, Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming, 2nd Edition [3 volumes], ABC-CLIO, page 316