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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
individuality
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
lose
▪ The closeness was as strong as the pull of their own lives; they lost the pain of individuality within its protection.
▪ I lose my individuality in its waves.
▪ In the process, it loses individuality.
▪ But this can not survive if an orchestra loses its individuality and independence.
▪ As people become swept up in conforming to this, they lose their individuality.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Changing the color of his hair was his way of expressing his individuality.
▪ It's difficult to be part of a highly organized group such as the armed forces without losing some of your individuality.
▪ We have a close working relationship while retaining our individuality and separate interests.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Individuality

Individuality \In`di*vid`u*al"i*ty\, n.; pl. Individualities.

  1. The quality or state of being individual or constituting an individual; separate or distinct existence; oneness; unity.
    --Arbuthnot.

    They possess separate individualities.
    --H. Spencer.

  2. The character or property appropriate or peculiar to an individual; that quality which distinguishes one person or thing from another; the sum of characteristic traits; distinctive character; as, he is a person of marked individuality.

  3. A habit of thinking and acting in one's own distinctive manner and as one believes appropriate, not being heavily influenced by the opinions of others; -- of people.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
individuality

"the aggregate of one's idiosyncrasies," 1610s, from individual + -ity. Meaning "fact of existing as an individual" is from 1650s.

Wiktionary
individuality

n. (context uncountable English) The characteristics which contribute to the differentiation or distinction of someone or something from a group of otherwise comparable identity.

WordNet
individuality
  1. n. the quality of being individual; "so absorbed by the movement that she lost all sense of individuality" [syn: individualism, individuation] [ant: commonality]

  2. the distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity; "you can lose your identity when you join the army" [syn: identity, personal identity]

Usage examples of "individuality".

A compromise, that--like many other things in his life and works--between individuality and the accepted view of things, aestheticism and fashion, the critical sense and authority.

While in Brahminism man was deprived of his individuality, and regarded only as an effluence from Brahma, and tormented by the fear of hell, and by the thought of a ceaseless process of countless new births awaiting him after death, whence the necessity of the most painful penances and chastisements, Sakya-muni began with man as an individual, and in morals put purity, abstinence, patience, brotherly love, and repentance for sins committed above sacrifice and bodily mortification, and opened to his followers the prospect, after this weary life, no more to be exposed to the ever-recurring pains of new birth, but released from all suffering to return to Nirvana, or nothingness.

The aloofness displayed for each other by members of the marine coelenterate species of Gorgonaceae suggests that mechanisms for preserving individuality must have existed long before the evolution of immunity.

They caught the lines and lights and colors of the great men, but they overlooked the fact that the excellence of the imitated lay largely in their inimitable individualities, which could not be combined.

It is as if, he says, nature develops habitsmorphic units with morphic fields, which he also calls holonsand once these holons are developed or become set as habits of nature, then nature simply keeps reusing them in succeeding stagesanother version of compound individuality.

It was new, still unfamiliar, and each hammerstone had its own individuality.

He thinks this is a bogus condition designed by fascist headshrinkers who want to destroy any spark of individuality and foster conformity at a young age.

No doubt certain nations, because of their perilous international situation, may be obliged to sacrifice the moral and economic individuality of the people to the demands of political security and efficiency.

The individuality of Netherlandish illumination above every other quality establishes its identity.

Cats are the runes of beauty, invincibility, wonder, pride, freedom, coldness, self-sufficiency, and dainty individuality -- the qualities of sensitive, enlightened, mentally developed, pagan, cynical, poetic, philosophic, dispassionate, reserved, independent, Nietzschean, unbroken, civilised, master-class men.

Thus the Unity of the Universe, represented by the symbolic egg, contained in itself two units, the Soul and the Intelligence, which pervaded all its parts: and they were to the Universe, considered as an animated and intelligent being, what intelligence and the soul of life are to the individuality of man.

Burbank feels the individuality, or genius of the plant--that something which invents, changes, urges and adds or drops characteristics as the plant advances.

Perplexed, and feeling an urgent need to assess the threat to his treasured individuality, Erasmus looked up at some of the other watcheyes around his villa.

Or, more precisely, the Over-Soul is a new and higher holon embracing the physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere as junior components in its own compound individuality.

They receive from the parent state a political organization, which, though subordinate, yet constitutes them embryonic states, with a unity, individuality, and centre of public life in themselves, and which, when they are detached and recognized as independent, render them complete states.