/ˈɪnstəns/
[noun] A single example or case of something happening. It can also mean a particular moment or situation, or a request made to someone in authority.
'Instance' originally meant urgency — pressing on someone like a hand pushing against a door.
The word 'instance' travels to us from Latin, where its ancestor was the verb *instare*, meaning 'to stand upon' or 'to press upon'. This was built from two parts: *in-*, meaning 'upon' or 'against', and *stare*, meaning 'to stand'. Together they conjured a vivid physical image — the act of leaning in close, pressing persistently, standing right up against something or someone. From this verb came the noun *instantia*, which in classical Latin carried the sense of urgency, persistence, or earnest entreaty. To make an *instantia* was not simply to ask, but to press your case with force.
The word moved into Old French as *instance*, carrying much of the same weight — a pressing request, an appeal, an urgent demand. It was in this form that English borrowed it in the 14th century, and for a long time English speakers used 'instance' almost exclusively in the sense of insistent pleading or solicitation. You would speak of doing something 'at the instance of' someone, meaning at their urgent request — a phrase that still survives in formal and legal English today.
The philosophical shift came through the influence of medieval scholars writing in Latin. Logicians and theologians began using *instantia* to mean a concrete example cited to counter an argument — an objection backed by a specific case. If you were debating a general rule, your opponent might offer an *instantia*, a particular situation that stood as a challenge to your claim. This is where the modern meaning of 'a single example' really begins to take shape: the instance as something that stands up against the general, a specific case that tests or illustrates a broader principle.
By the 16th and 17th centuries, English writers like Francis Bacon were using 'instance' freely in its more familiar modern sense — a particular occurrence, a concrete example, a specimen of a general class. The urgency and confrontation of the original Latin gradually faded, leaving behind the cooler, more neutral idea of a single case. Yet the ghost of that pressing quality lingered in phrases like 'in the first instance', meaning the first step taken in a process, as if each stage of action were a fresh act of pressing forward.
In modern usage, 'instance' has spread into technical language with remarkable energy. In computing, an 'instance' refers to a single running copy of a program or a specific object created from a class template — a direct descendant of the philosophical idea of a particular thing that exemplifies a general type. The word has thus completed a fascinating circle: born from the physical image of pressing and standing, refined into a logical term for a specific example, and now living a busy digital life naming the very concrete objects that computers create from abstract patterns.