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.

Noun

(en noun)

That which is considered to exist as a separate entity, object, quality or concept.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author=(Oliver Burkeman)

, volume=189, issue=2, page=48, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= The tao of tech , passage=The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […], or offering services that let you […], "share the things you love with the world" and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.}}

A word, symbol, sign, or other referent that can be used to refer to any entity.

An individual object or distinct entity.

(informal) Something that is normal or generally recognised.

(legal) Whatever can be owned.

The latest fad or fashion.

(in the plural) Clothes, possessions or equipment.

(informal) A unit or container, usually containing edible goods.

(informal) A problem, dilemma, or complicating factor.

(slang) A penis.

* 1959 , , (Naked Lunch) , 50th anniversary edition (2009), p. 126:

“Oh Gertie it’s true. It’s all true. They’ve got a horrid gash instead of a thrilling thing .”

A living being or creature.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Revenge of the nerds , passage=Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food.}}

That which matters; the crux.

* 1914 , Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, The Movie Man] [playscript:

Don’t forget to have Gomez postpone that shooting thing . (in reference to the execution of Fernandez)

(chiefly, historical) A public assembly or judicial council in a Germanic country.

* 1974 , Jón Jóhannesson, A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth: Íslendinga Saga , translated by Haraldur Bessason, page 46:

In accordance with Old Germanic custom men came to the thing fully armed, [...]

* 1974', Jakob Benediktsson, ''Landnám og upphaf allsherjarríkis'', in ''Saga Íslands'', quoted in '''1988 by Jesse L. Byock in ''Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power , page 85:

The goðar'' seem both to have received payment of ''thing-fararkaup from those who stayed home and at the same time compensated those who went to the thing , and it cannot be seen whether they had any profit from these transactions.

* 1988 , Jesse L. Byock, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power , page 59:

All Icelandic things were skap-thing , meaning that they were governed by established procedure and met at regular legally designated intevals at predetermined meeting places.