instancenoun/ˈɪnstəns/

• 1

  obsoleteUrgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence.

  • I know one very well alied, to whom, at the instance of a brother of his[…], I spake to that purpose[…].
  • […]undertook at her instance to restore them.
• 2

  obsoleteA token; a sign; a symptom or indication.

  • It sends some precious instance of itself/ After the thing it loves.
• 3

  obsoleteThat which is urgent; motive.

  • The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
• 4

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

  • 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 […]
• 5

  An occasion; an order of occurrence.

  • The Statutes, or Acts of Parliament themſelves. Theſe ſeem, as if in the Time of Edw[ard] I. they were drawn up into the Form of a Law in the firſt Inſtance, and ſo aſſented to by both Houſes, and the King, as may appear by the very Obſervation of the Contexture and Fabrick of the Statutes of thoſe Times.
• 6

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

  • August 30, 1706, Francis Atterbury, a sermon preach'd in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, at the funeral of Mr. Tho. Bennet 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 […]
• 7

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

  • One's own death is an 'accidental' event, simply another instance of the general rule that human beings die.
  • If you choose to drink again the best way to avoid another instance of withdrawal is to avoid drinking two days in a row.
• 8

  computingengineeringmathematicsA specific occurrence of something that is created or instantiated, such as a database, or an object of a class in object-oriented programming.

  • Some compilers will allow statics to be inlined, but then incorrectly create multiple instances of the inlined variable at run-time.

instanceverb/ˈɪnstəns/

• 1

  To mention as a case or example; to refer to.

  • Near-synonyms: adduce, cite
  • The reason why so many fallacious opinions have passed into proverbs is owing to that carelessness which makes the individual instance the general rule.
• 2

  To cite an example as proof; to exemplify.

• 3

  To duplicate (a dungeon or other area) 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.

  • In these games, such as World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, most significant PvP happens inside instanced or player-capped areas.
  • This is an improvement compared to contemporary MMORPG which combine zoning and instancing, whereas replication is currently not available for a combination with either of them. Zoning (Cai, Xavier, Turner, & Lee, 2002; Macedonia, Zyda,[…]
• 4

  computer-graphicscomputingengineeringTo render (an object) as part of a batch, using the same geometry data.