Noun

(en noun)

An interval of space or time in which one set of events or phenomena is completed.

the cycle of the seasons, or of the year

* Burke

Wages to the medium of provision during the last bad cycle of twenty years.

A complete rotation of anything.

A process that returns to its beginning and then repeats itself in the same sequence.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Legal highs: A new prescription , passage=No sooner has a [synthetic] drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. These “legal highs” are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again.}}

The members of the sequence formed by such a process.

(music) In musical set theory, an interval cycle is the set of pitch classes resulting from repeatedly applying the same interval class to the starting pitch class.

A series of poems, songs or other works of art.

A programme on a washing machine, dishwasher, or other such device.

the spin cycle

A pedal-powered vehicle, such as a unicycle, bicycle, or tricycle; or, motorized vehicle that has either two or three wheels, such as a motorbike, motorcycle, motorized tricycle, or motortrike.

(baseball) A single, a double, a triple, and a home run hit by the same player in the same game.

(graph theory) A closed walk or path, with or without repeated vertices allowed.

An imaginary circle or orbit in the heavens; one of the celestial spheres.

(Milton)

(Burke)

An age; a long period of time.

* Tennyson

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

An orderly list for a given time; a calendar.

* Evelyn

We present our gardeners with a complete cycle of what is requisite to be done throughout every month of the year.

(botany) One entire round in a circle or a spire.

a cycle or set of leaves

(Gray)

Noun

(en noun)

(obsolete) Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence.

*, II.8:

I know one very well alied, to whom, at the instance of a brother of his.

* Sir Walter Scott

undertook at her instance to restore them.

(obsolete) A token; a sign; a symptom or indication.

It sends some precious instance of itself/ After the thing it loves. Hamlet IV. v. ca. 1602

(obsolete) That which is urgent; motive.

* Shakespeare

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

Occasion; order of occurrence.

* Sir M. Hale

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

A case offered as an exemplification or a precedent; an illustrative example.

* Atterbury

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

One of a series of recurring occasions, cases, essentially the same.

*

*

* 2010 , The Guardian , 11 Oct 2010:

The organisations claim fraudsters are targeting properties belonging to both individuals and companies, in some instances using forged documents.

(obsolete) A piece of evidence; a proof or sign (of something).

* c. 1594 , William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors :

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 [...].

(computing) In object-oriented programming: a created object, one that has had memory allocated for local data storage; an instantiation of a class.

(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.

* 2006 September 1, "Dan" (username), " Re: DPS Classes: Why should I heal you?", in alt.games.warcraft, Usenet:

As long as the most difficult instance you've tried is Gnomeregan, you're never going to be credible talking about 'difficult encounters'.

* 2010 , , Online Multiplayer Games , Morgan & Claypool, ISBN 9781608451425, page 26:

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.

* 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:

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.

(massively multiplayer online games) An individual copy of such a dungeon or other area.

* 2005 January 11, Patrick B., " Re: Instance dungeons", in alt.games.warcraft, Usenet:

The instance is created for the group that enters it.

* 2005 December 6, "Rene" (username), " Re: Does group leader affect drops?", in alt.games.warcraft, Usenet:

As soon as the first player enters (spawns) a new instance , it appears that the loottable is somehow chosen.

* 2010 , Anthony Steed & Manuel Fradinho Oliveira, Networked Graphics: Building Networked Games and Virtual Environments , Elsevier, ISBN 978-0-12-374423-4, page 398:

A castle on the eastern edge of the island spawns a new instance whenever a party of players enters.