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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
instance
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
particular
▪ But suppose we don't know of any particular instances.
▪ Firms may be unaware of theft by their employees, and shops will not be aware of particular instances of shoplifting.
▪ It outlined a set of principles and indicated how they would work in particular instances.
▪ Now one would not wish to deny the value of extrapolation, of drawing general conclusions from the evidence of particular instances.
▪ The simpler level is a search for the correct output for some particular instance.
▪ But how are we to evaluate their size in any particular instance?
▪ In this particular instance the service is the actual act of painting, the goods are the canvas and frame.
▪ Two particular instances will illustrate some of the difficulties.
rare
▪ The chances of Down's recurring in a subsequent birth is also rare in most instances.
▪ In rare instances, they were even given plantations and slaves of their own.
▪ Once your case is concluded you can not, except in very rare instances, return to seek further compensation.
▪ In exceedingly rare instances, a neoplasm or arteriovenous malformation may be the cause.
▪ Typically the two communities exchange correspondence, gifts and, in rare instances, visits.
▪ In rare instances, parkinsonian patients taking levodopa experience increased libido as a side effect.
▪ Yet a few rare instances provide us with at least a general sense of the magnitude of this particular organizational cost.
▪ In rare instances, he sees the desert gently.
specific
▪ From a social efficiency point of view, the methods chosen in any specific instance should be determined by efficiency considerations.
▪ Do not ask for specific instances, particularly for something like birth; just take whatever is presented.
▪ That is something that can be argued over in specific instances.
▪ As well as noting occupations, he made occasional comments on specific instances of poverty.
▪ The pupil seems to be giving instructions for others to follow rather than saying what was done in this specific instance.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
in the first instance
▪ We must act to prevent pollution in the first instance.
▪ A limited contract for a few sessions, at least in the first instance, is always preferable.
▪ It was not designed as a dwelling place in the first instance.
▪ It will be screened in the first instance for Tory Party workers throughout Britain.
▪ Making contact with the families in the first instance was the most difficult problem.
▪ Smith regarded this distribution as depending in the first instance on relative bargaining strength.
▪ Soviet forces were not, at least in the first instance, to be withdrawn unconditionally.
▪ The decision should be made in the first instance as if it were easy to be made.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Another instance of Charles's outspokenness was his attack on his sister's choice of husband.
▪ Some users of Ecstasy have actually died, but such instances are very rare.
▪ The grey suit has been replaced in some instances with pink trousers and sandals.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But here Golding offers the extremest instance of how it might be tragic too.
▪ Elizabeth had said so and she had been, as she was in so many instances, quietly right.
▪ Fiscal policy, for instance, is commendably tight; there are no signs of any government-led dash for growth.
▪ It outlined a set of principles and indicated how they would work in particular instances.
▪ Rather than any theory of civilizations, therefore, we must study real instances if we wish to understand what civilization is.
▪ Scholars have found, for instance, surprising links between Taylor and a number of literary figures.
▪ The rise from 7, 000 to 8, 000, for instance, equaled a gain of 14. 3 percent.
▪ These three cases are instances of a civilization working over its own heritage something rarely brought fully to light.
II.verb
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Minton's sober and workmanlike drawings instance his delight in registering rhythmic activity and industrial shapes.
▪ The connections and friendships of Surrealism can also be instanced as opportunities for advocacy.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Instance

Instance \In"stance\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Instanced; p. pr. & vb. n. Instancing.] To mention as a case or example; to refer to; to cite; as, to instance a fact.
--H. Spenser.

I shall not instance an abstruse author.
--Milton.

Instance

Instance \In"stance\, v. i. To give an example. [Obs.]

This story doth not only instance in kingdoms, but in families too.
--Jer. Taylor.

Instance

Instance \In"stance\, n. [F. instance, L. instantia, fr. instans. See Instant.]

  1. The act or quality of being instant or pressing; urgency; solicitation; application; suggestion; motion.

    Undertook at her instance to restore them.
    --Sir W. Scott.

  2. That which is instant or urgent; motive. [Obs.]

    The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
    --Shak.

  3. Occasion; order of occurrence.

    These seem as if, in the time of Edward I., they were drawn up into the form of a law, in the first instance.
    --Sir M. Hale.

  4. That which offers itself or is offered as an illustrative case; something cited in proof or exemplification; a case occurring; an example; as, we could find no instance of poisoning in the town within the past year.

    Most remarkable instances of suffering.
    --Atterbury.

  5. A token; a sign; a symptom or indication.
    --Shak.

    Causes of instance, those which proceed at the solicitation of some party.
    --Hallifax.

    Court of first instance, the court by which a case is first tried.

    For instance, by way of example or illustration; for example.

    Instance Court (Law), the Court of Admiralty acting within its ordinary jurisdiction, as distinguished from its action as a prize court.

    Syn: Example; case. See Example.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
instance

mid-14c., "urgency," from Old French instance "eagerness, anxiety, solicitation" (13c.), from Latin instantia "presence, effort intention; earnestness, urgency," literally "a standing near," from instans (see instant). In Scholastic logic, "a fact or example" (early 15c.), from Medieval Latin instantia, used to translate Greek enstasis. This led to use in phrase for instance "as an example" (1650s), and the noun phrase To give (someone) a for instance (1953, American English).

Wiktionary
instance

n. 1 (context obsolete English) urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence. (14th-19th c.) 2 (context obsolete English) A token; a sign; a symptom or indication. 3 (context obsolete English) That which is urgent; motive. 4 Occasion; order of occurrence. 5 A case offered as an exemplification or a precedent; an illustrative example. (from 16th c.) 6 One of a series of recurring occasions, cases, essentially the same. 7 (context obsolete English) A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something). (16th-18th c.) 8 (context computing English) In object-oriented programming: a created object, one that has had memory allocated for local data storage; an instantiation of a class. (from 20th c.) 9 (context massively multiplayer online games English) 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. 10 (context massively multiplayer online games English) An individual copy of such a dungeon or other are

  1. v

  2. 1 (context transitive English) To mention as a case or example; to refer to; to cite; as, to instance a fact. 2 (context intransitive English) To cite an example as proof; to exemplify.

WordNet
instance
  1. n. an occurrence of something; "it was a case of bad judgment"; "another instance occurred yesterday"; "but there is always the famous example of the Smiths" [syn: case, example]

  2. an item of information that is representative of a type; "this patient provides a typical example of the syndrome"; "there is an example on page 10" [syn: example, illustration, representative]

  3. v. clarify by giving an example of [syn: exemplify, illustrate]

Wikipedia
Instance (computer science)

In object-oriented programming (OOP), an instance is a concrete occurrence of any object, existing usually during the runtime of a computer program. Formally, "instance" is synonymous with "object" as they are each a particular value (realization), and these may be called an instance object; "instance" emphasizes the distinct identity of the object. The creation of an instance is called instantiation.

In class-based programming, objects are created from classes by subroutines called constructors, and destroyed by destructors. An object is an instance of a class, and may be called a class instance or class object; instantiation is then also known as construction. Not all classes can be instantiated abstract classes cannot be instantiated, while classes that can be instantiated are called concrete classes. In prototype-based programming, instantiation is instead done by copying a prototype.

An object may be varied in a number of ways. Each realized variation of that object is an instance. Each time a program runs, it is an instance of that program. That is, it is a member of a given class that has specified values rather than variables. In a non-programming context, you could think of "dog" as a type and your particular dog as an instance of that class.

An important distinction is between the data type, which is interface, and the class, which is implementation.

The meaning of the term "type" in computer science is rather similar to the meaning of the word "type" in everyday language. For example, a barman can ask a client what type of beverage does he or she want coffee, tea or beer? A particular cup of coffee that the client receives is in the role of an instance, while two cups of coffee would form a set of two instances of coffee, determining its type at the same time.

Usage examples of "instance".

But if liquid of the same species were added, of instance, wine with wine, the same species would remain, but the wine would not be the same numerically, as the diversity of the accidents shows: for instance, if one wine were white and the other red.

If capital today is more concerned with ensuring that individuals perform their social labor as consumers, then we can see Condomology as an instance of aestheticizing the political economy.

Particularly instructive and well reported is the instance of bear cult of the Ainu of Japan, a Caucasoid race that entered and settled Japan centuries earlier than the Mongoloid Japanese, and are confined today to the northern islands, Hokkaido and Sakhalin -- the latter now, of course, in Russian hands.

Although, no doubt, many of the ecclesiastics of the time were a disgrace to their profession, as in former days was William of Ledbury, who was prior of Malvern, yet there were good Catholics as well as good Lollards, and I instanced Prior Alcock, who even then was engaged in the rebuilding of Little Malvern Priory, and I thought people should be allowed to worship God in their own fashion without being considered sinful.

Bishop Alcock, who was learned in all local lore, as well as in all ecclesiastical research, again discoursed on the celestial wonders brought to mother earth, and instanced the example of St.

Yet there will be found some instances where I have completely failed in this attempt, and one, which I here request the reader to consider as an erratum, where there is left, most inadvertently, an alexandrine in the middle of a stanza.

Duchesne mentions an instance of complete amenorrhea, in which the ordinary flow was replaced by periodic sweats.

For instance, if that gunboat, with its purple-whiskered Amsterdammer of a captain, should just now happen in.

The double river-systems of the Volga and Kama, the Obi and Irtish, the Angara and Yenisei, the Lena and Vitim on the Arctic slope, the Amur and Sungari on the Pacific slope, are instances.

For instance, in 1981 Harry Oppenheimer, chairman of the giant Anglo American Corporation that controls gold and diamond mining, sales and distribution in the world, stated that he was about to launch into the North American banking market.

Lidocaine, the antiarrhythmic and lo-cal anesthetic, for instance, could cause prolonged seizures if given intravenously in large enough doses.

For instance, one tiny wasp, aphelinus mail, goes after woolly aphids and very little else.

Nova Police can be compared to apomorphine, a regulating instance that need not continue and has no intention of continuing after its work is done.

In describing the country, extraction, and manners of Herculius, we have already delineated those of Galerius, who was often, and not improperly, styled the younger Maximian, though, in many instances both of virtue and ability, he appears to have possessed a manifest superiority over the elder.

Quintii, Capitolinus and Cincinnatus, and his own uncle, Caius Claudius, a man most stedfast in the interest of the nobility, and other citizens of the same eminence, he appoints as decemvirs men by no means equal in rank of life: himself in the first instance, which proceeding honourable men disapproved so much the more, as no one had imagined that he would have the daring to act so.