Word Confusion: Instance versus Instant

Plural for the noun: instances
Gerund: instancing

Third person present verb: instances
Past tense or past participle: instanced
Present participle: instancing

Plural for the noun: instants

• A particular case

An example put forth in proof or illustration

[Also called instanced dungeon in an online multiplayer video game] A zone, as a dungeon, to which access is limited to a player or group of players entering simultaneously and working together

[Law] The institution and prosecution of a case

[Archaic] Urgency in speech or action

[Archaic] Motive or reason

[Obsolete] An impelling motive

Verb, intransitive:
To cite an instance or an example as proof

To exemplify

Verb, transitive:
Cite (a fact, case, etc.) as an example

To exemplify by an instance

• Prepared quickly and with little effort
• [Of food] Processed to allow quick preparation
• [Of a person] Becoming a specified thing immediately or very suddenly

[Dated] Urgent

• Pressing

[Dated; postpositive; in business letters] Of the current month

[Archaic] Of the present moment

Succeeding without any interval of time

• Prompt
• Immediate

Present

• Current

Adverb:
A poetic word for instantly, at once

Noun:
A precise moment of time

An infinitesimal or very short space of time

• A moment

The point of time now present or present with reference to some action or event

[Informal] Instant coffee

The search finds every instance where the word appears.

In this instance it mattered little.

To cite a few instances . . .

Each instance is one copy of the zone in which the quests, enemies, items, events, etc., are staged exclusively for the player or group accessing it, without interference from other player characters in the larger online population of the game server.

The Federal Court of Australia at first instance and then on appeal denied judicial review.

The Supreme Court hears cases at last instance only.

Over twenty instances of sexual misconduct are currently being investigated.

These companies don’t have the people resources; in certain instances, they don’t have the expertise.

I don’t usually side with the management, but in this instance I agree with what they’re saying.

Verb, intransitive:
The facts were as she instanced.

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.

Verb, transitive:
Here he instances in particular the work of Bach.

Repeated in a new situation, the old formulations can often be misleading, as instanced by the examples of Baius and Jansenius in the seventeenth century.

Well, it’s not actually illegal as instanced by the fact you can buy playing cards in the major stores.

He instanced one Dublin firm where 10 workers use eight vans.

We can’t promise instant solutions.

Have you any instant coffee?

She won the lottery and became an instant millionaire.

He has the instant desire to blame others when things go wrong.

Your letter of the 6th instant concerns me.

In the instant case, the direct given by the judge has not been shown to be inappropriate in the circumstances.

He got instant relief from his headache.

The instant case before the court will be shunted aside.

Adverb:
Just capturing that would have given the documentary classic status in the instant.

When the neighbors’ dog barked, ours instant replied with a howl.

“Theoxena, although she were [instant] urged thereunto, could never be induced to marry againe” (De Montaigne).

Noun:
Come here this instant!

At that instant the sun came out.

For an instant the moon disappeared.

Instant is so easy to prepare.

They arrived not an instant too soon.

It was at the instant of contact.

The original sense was urgency, urgent entreaty, surviving in at the instance of.

In the late 16th century, the word denoted a particular case cited to disprove a general assertion, derived from the medieval Latin instantia meaning example to the contrary (translating the Greek enstasis meaning objection); hence the meaning single occurrence.