Entity

How to spell entity

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce entity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does entity mean?

1. nounA thing that exists as a separate and self-contained unit, whether an object, an organisation, or a being.

Entity in a sentence

• The new subsidiary operates as a separate legal entity from its parent company.

• Each department was treated as an independent entity for budgeting purposes.

Where does entity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Late Latin entitas, meaning 'being' or 'existence', which scholars coined from ens (genitive entis), the present participle of esse, 'to be'. In other words, an entity is literally 'a thing that is', something that exists in its own right. Medieval philosophers found the term indispensable when arguing about what truly has being, and it travelled into English in the late sixteenth century as a piece of scholarly and legal vocabulary. From those abstract roots it broadened into the everyday senses we use now, covering distinct things, organisations, and units that can be treated as wholes. The same Latin esse sits behind common relatives like 'essence' and 'present', and the slightly unusual -tity ending, rather than the more familiar -tion, is the spot where writers most often hesitate.

How the word is built

• ent- (from Latin ens, entis: a being, that which is)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix indicating a state or thing)