English - Alternative Forms

• enstance, enstaunce, instaunce (all obsolete)

English - Etymology

From Middle French instance, from Latin instantia (“a being near, presence, also perseverance, earnestness, importunity, urgency”), from instans (“urgent”); see instant.

English - Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɪnstəns/

English - Noun

instance (plural instances)

1. (obsolete) Urgency of manner or words; an urgent request; insistence. [14th-19th c.]
   • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, II.8:

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

English - Verb

instance (third-person singular simple present instances, present participle instancing, simple past and past participle instanced)

1. (transitive) To mention as a case or example; to refer to; to cite; as, to instance a fact.
   • 1946, E. M. Butler, Rainer Maria Rilke, p. 404

     The poems which I have instanced are concrete and relatively glaring examples of the intangible difference which the change of language made in Rilke's visions .

2. (intransitive) To cite an example as proof; to exemplify.

English - References

• instance in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• instance in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

English - Anagrams

• ancients, canniest, catenins, insectan, tenascin

French - Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɛ̃s.tɑ̃s/

French - Etymology 1

From Latin instantia

Noun

instance

French - Etymology 2

A derivative of etymology 1, but reborrowed from English.

Noun

instance

French - Anagrams

• cantines

French - External Links

• “instance” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Rima