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)

The way in which something is positioned vis-à-vis its surroundings.

* 1908 , (Kenneth Grahame), (The Wind in the Willows) :

...he being naturally an underground animal by birth and breeding, the situation of Badger's house exactly suited him and made him feel at home; while the Rat, who slept every night in a bedroom the windows of which opened on a breezy river, naturally felt the atmosphere still and oppressive.

The place in which something is situated; a location.

* 1833 , Thomas Hibbert and Robert Buist, The American Flower Garden Directory , page 142:

[Hibíscus] speciòsus is the most splendid, and deserves a situation in every garden.

Position or status with regard to conditions and circumstances.

The combination of circumstances at a given moment; a state of affairs.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=Then we relapsed into a discomfited silence, and wished we were anywhere else. But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud, and with such a hearty enjoyment that instead of getting angry and more mortified we began to laugh ourselves, and instantly felt better.}}

(UK, dated) A position of employment; a post.

* 1913 , , (Sons and Lovers) , Penguin 2006, page 78:

When he was nineteen, he suddenly left the 'Co-op' office, and got a situation in Nottingham.

* 1946 , Vaughn Horton, Denver Darling, Milt Gabler, :

You take a morning paper from the top of the stack

And read the situations from the front to the back

The only job that's open need a man with a knack

So put it right back in the rack Jack.

A difficult or unpleasant set of circumstances; a problem.

Boss, we've got a situation here...