entity

Everyday

1. An entity is something that exists as a separate, single thing with its own identity, such as a company, a country or a living being. tree →
2. (formal) In law and business, an entity is an organisation treated as one unit, such as «a legal entity». tree →
3. In computing and stories, an entity can be any object or being: a character in a game, or a mysterious creature or ghost. tree →

In the lessons

A formal, general word used when you want to talk about «a thing» without saying exactly what kind. In science and philosophy it means anything that exists. In computing, game characters and objects are called entities. In spooky stories, «an entity» is an unknown being. Phrases: «a separate entity», «a legal entity», «a single entity».

Examples

• The school and the nursery are separate entities. tree →
• A company is a legal entity, like a person in the eyes of the law. tree →
• Each country is an independent entity. tree →
• In the game, every monster is an entity with its own health points. tree →
• The ghost story was about a strange entity in the attic. tree →
• The team works together as a single entity. tree →

Note

Plural: entities (y → ies). Countable: an entity. Formal; in everyday speech say «thing», «body» or «organisation».

In Jewish tradition

Interpretation: In Sefer Yetzirah, commentators read God as the one eternal being who made all other things, and the ten sefirot as basic parts of creation. In the primary lessons: A formal, general word used when you want to talk about «a thing» without saying exactly what kind. In science and philosophy it means anything that exists. In computing, game characters and objects are called entities. In spooky stories, «an entity» is an unknown being. Phrases: «a separate entity», «a legal entity», «a single entity».

Examples

• 1) Our author maintains that there is a first intelligent, self-existing, almighty, eternal ruling cause of all things, and that an everlasting entity produced nonentities by a progression of effects. (Sefer Yetzirah, Kalisch 1877) tree →
• In this interpretation, they are ten elemental entities or properties which bind or restrain primordial תֹּהוּ tohu, 'chaos, void, waste(land)' [Genesis 1:2], allowing structure and order to exist in creation. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) tree →
• This way of thinking about language imbues the Hebrew root itself with a certain metaphysical reality, an entity from which more concrete instantions of individual words may ontologically descend and ultimately crystallize into concrete speech or material reality. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) tree →

Note

Plural: entities (y → ies). Countable: an entity. Formal; in everyday speech say «thing», «body» or «organisation».