 | This articlerelies largely or entirely on asingle source. Relevant discussion may be found on thetalk page. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Entity" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(July 2024) |
Anentity is something thatexists as itself. It does not need to be of material existence. In particular,abstractions andlegal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity isanimate, orpresent. The verb tense of this form is to 'entitize' - meaning to convert into an entity; to perceive as tangible or alive.[1]
The term is broad in scope and may refer to animals; natural features such as mountains; inanimate objects such as tables; numbers or sets as symbols written on a paper; human contrivances such as laws, corporations and academic disciplines; orsupernatural beings such as gods and spirits.
The adjectival form isentitative.
The wordentity is derived from the Latinentitas, which in turn derives from the Latinens meaning "being" or "existing" (compare Englishessence).Entity may hence literally be taken to mean "thing which exists".
Ontology is the study of concepts of existence, and of recognition of entities. The words ontic and entity are derived respectively from the ancient Greek and Latin present participles that mean "being".
In an ontic inquiry... one asks about the properties or the physical relations and structures peculiar to some entity – in the pen's case, for example, we might make the following ontic observations about it: it is black, full of blue ink, and sitting on top of my desk.[2]
Inlaw, a legal entity is an entity that is capable of bearing legalrights andobligations, such as anatural person or anartificial person (e.g. business entity or a corporate entity).
Inpolitics,entity is used as term for territorial divisions of some countries (e.g.Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Ineconomics,economic entity is one of the assumptions made ingenerally accepted accounting principles. Almost any type of organization or unit in society can be an economic entity.
Inaccounting, theentity concept is the concept that a business or an organization and its owners are treated as two separate parties.
In medicine, adisease entity is an illness due to a particular definite cause or to a specific pathological process. While a disease entity is not defined by asyndrome, it may or may not be manifest in one or more particular syndromes.
Incomputer science, an entity is anobject that has anidentity, which is independent of the changes of itsattributes. It represents long-lived information relevant for the users and is usually stored in adatabase.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
