entity
noun/ˈɛn.tɪ.ti/
Etymology From the Medieval Latin entitās, from ēns (“being”) (stem: ent-) + -tās (compare essentia), see there for more information.
That which has a distinct existence as an individual unit, often used for organizations which have no physical form.
- The organisational and administrative tasks involved in welding the railways into a single entity have also received much publicity.1951 April, D. S. Barrie, “British Railways: A Survey, 1948-1950”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 223:
- It is also pertinent to note that the current obvious decline in work on holarctic hepatics most surely reflects a current obsession with cataloging and with nomenclature of the organisms—as divorced from their study as living entities.1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page ix:
2 more examples
- Weinersmith, who is best known for his webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, describes the polystate as a geopolitical entity in which multiple overlapping states exist — but each “state” consists of citizens who have agreed to the laws of a single non-geographic state; typical geographically-bound nations, or traditional “geostates”, would be replaced by “polystates”, which are collections of “anthrostates”.2014 June 12, George Dvorsky, “12 Futuristic Forms of Government That Could One Day Rule the World”, in Gizmodo:
- The monitor overseeing the Trump Organization’s finances wrote in its latest report that Donald Trump’s company intends to create 25 new entities for products or hotel licensing deals.2024 October 23, Kara Scannell, “Trump Organization intends to create 25 entities for future product or hotel licensing deals, monitor says”, in CNN:
The existence of something considered apart from its properties.
Computing, Databases, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences Anything about which information or data can be stored in a database; in particular, one item in an organised array or set of individual elements or parts of the same type.
The state or quality of being or existence.
- The group successfully maintains its tribal entity.
A spirit, ghost, or the like.
- [B]ut only too often séances degenerate into pure sorcery or necromancy, attracting all kinds of undeveloped and earth-bound entities.1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 231:
Literature, Media, Publishing, Science fiction An alien lifeform that has no corporeal body.
- Synonyms
- entity
- Derived terms
- entitative, entitic, entitize, Entity, entity alignment, Entity Bean, entity identifier, entitylike, Entity List, entity-relationship diagram, entity-relationship model, entity tag, nonentity, presentity, subentity, superentity
- Related terms
- ens, duality, entirety, identity, relationship, trinity, existence, Appendix:Roget MICRA thesaurus/Class I § 1. Existence
- Hypernyms
- entry, quoddity, phenomenon
- Hyponyms
28 terms
bioentity, first-class entity, geopolitical entity, instance, legal entity, microentity, micronational entity, mobile entity, molecular entity, political entity, presentity, second-class entity, special-purpose entity, third-class entity, Zionist entity, animal, artifact, being, creature, critter, person, organism, object, plant, thing, thingy, number, shape- Holonyms
- database, superentity, group