Forms: 7 entitie, -ye, (entite), 7– entity. [ad. late L. entitāt-em, f. ēns, enti-s: see ENS. Cf. Fr. entité, It. entità, Sp. entitad.
The orig. sense was abstr., but, in accordance with the usual tendency of such words, it early acquired a concr. sense (= ENS), which predominates in mod. use.]
1. Being, existence, as opposed to non-existence; the existence, as distinguished from the qualities or relations, of anything.
1596. Bell, Surv. Popery, III. ix. 372. God … is the principall agent of the real and positive entities thereof.
1647. H. More, Song of Soul, Antipsychopannychia, III. xxix. Both Night and Coldnesse … have reall entitie.
1656. Hobbes, Liberty, Necess. & C. (1841), 135. Entity is better than nonentity.
1710. Berkeley, Princ. Hum. Knowl., § 81. The positive abstract idea of quiddity, entity, or existence.
1830. Herschell, Stud. Nat. Phil., 108. In the το ὀν and the το μη ὀν, that is to say, in entity and nonentity.
1837–9. Hallam, Hist. Lit. (1847), III. iii. § 9. 305. Entity or real being.
2. That which constitutes the being of a thing; essence, essential nature.
1643. R. O., Man’s Mort., vii. 54. He, that is, his Entite, person, even all that went to make him man.
1648. Crashaw, Steps to Temple, 81. Dear hope!… The entity of things that are not yet.
a. 1688. Cudworth, Immut. Morality (1731), 16. It is impossible any Thing should Be … without a Nature or Entity.
1785. Reid, Int. Powers, 399. For the entity of all theoretical truth is nothing else but clear intelligibility.
3. concr. Something that has a real existence; an ENS, as distinguished from a mere function, attribute, relation, etc. † Rational entity: = L. ens rationis, a thing that has an existence only as an object of reason.
1628. T. Spencer, Logick, 209. The specificall difference, is a rationall entitie and no more.
1685. Boyle, Enq. Notion Nat., 22. This Death … is neither a Substance, nor a Positive Entity, but a meer Privation.
1735–8. Bolingbroke, On Parties, 139. ’Till it becomes an ideal Entity, like the Utopia.
1855. H. Spencer, Princ. Psychol. (1872), I. V. x. 626. No effort of imagination enables us to think of a shock, however minute, except as undergone by an entity.
1871. Darwin, Desc. Man, I. I. vii. 228. Those … must look at species either as separate creations or … distinct entities.
† b. An actual quantity (however small). Obs.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 123. Eruptions of Aire, though small and slight, give an Entitie of Sound.
c. (See quot.)
1881. Spottiswoode, in Nature, No. 624. 572. In some tubes, the exhaustion of which is very moderate … the blocks of light termed entities by Mr. De La Rue are formed.
4. indefinitely. What exists; ‘being’ generally.
1604. Edmonds, Observ. Cæsar’s Comm., 39. Our knowledge were equall to vniuersall entitie.
1670. Eachard, Cont. Clergy, 56. We be but Mites of Entity, and Crumbs of something.
1699. Garth, Dispens., 3. How the dim Speck of Entity began T’extend its recent Form, and stretch to Man.
1829. I. Taylor, Enthus., ii. (1867), 31. He has become … infinitely less than an atom … an incalculable fraction of positive entity!
