An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, though it need not be a material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is animate. Entities are used in system developments as models that display communications and internal processing of say documents compared to order processing

An entity could be viewed as a set containing subsets. In philosophy, such sets are said to be abstract objects.

The word entity is often useful when one wants to refer to something that could be a human being, a non-human animal, a non-thinking life-form such as a plant or fungus, a lifeless object, or even a belief; for instance. In this way, entity could be seen as a "catch all"-word.

Sometimes, the word entity is used in a general sense of a being, whether or not the referent has material existence; e.g., is often referred to as an entity with no corporeal form, such as a language. Taken further, entity sometimes refers to existence or being itself. For example, the former U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan said once that "the policy of the government of the United States is to seek . . . to preserve Chinese territorial and administrative entity."

In law, an entity is something capable of bearing legal rights and obligations. It generally means "legal entity" or "artificial person" but also includes "natural person".

Related concepts

* being
* individual
* object
* person
* polity
* resource

Specialized uses

* Entity is the root node of the SUMO, and stands for the universal class of individuals.

* In VHDL, entity is the keyword for defining a new object.
* An SGML entity is an abbreviation for some expanded piece of SGML text.
* In relational databases, an entity can refer to a table or its model as defined in Entity-relationship diagrams
* In the context of the open systems architecture, an entity is an active routine within a layer.
* In Chrono Trigger (Spoiler Warning) a mysterious force referred to as Entity is believed to be guiding the course of history.
* 'Zionist entity' is an Anti-Zionist locution referring to Israel
* In a number of computer game engines, the term refers to dynamic objects such as AI characters.

See also

* The Entity (the 1981 movie)
* Ontology, the study of being, existence and entities.

Category:Philosophical terminology
mg:Entity