instance

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Related to in the first instance: Court of first instance, in the second instance

instance

noun case, case in point, clarification, demonstration, elucidation, embodiment, ensample, exemplar, exemplification, exemplum, frame of referrnce, illustration, model, paradigm, representative, repreeentative selection, sample, specimen, type
Associated concepts: first instance, special instance, specific instance
See also: appeal, call, case, detail, evidence, example, exemplify, expression, illustrate, illustration, manifestation, occasion, occurrence, particular, quote, sample, situation, specify, specimen

instance

in Scottish civil procedure, the part of an initial writ that specifies the names and designations of the parties to an action. See also COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE.

COURT, INSTANCE. One of the branches of the English admiralty is called an instance court. Vide Instance Court.

INSTANCE, civil and French law. It signifies, generally, all sorts of actions and judicial demands. Dig. 44, 7, 58.

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I shouldn't have put myself in this painful position, I assure you, but that the lad himself desired to be brought here in the first instance, and I yielded to his prayers.
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For him, indeed, human life is, in the first instance, only an additional, and as it were incidental grace, upon this expressive landscape.
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Well, I should hope, in the first instance, to have for keeper an honest fellow like you.
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Miss Halcombe left me, with the intention of speaking, in the first instance, to the farmer's wife (of whose friendly readiness to help her in any way she was well assured), while I waited for her in the near neighbourhood of the house.
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I am also to take it as a matter of fact that the proposal to withdraw from the engagement came, in the first instance, from YOU?
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Micawber may have concealed his difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect that he would overcome them.
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As for you, son of Atreus, treat people more righteously in future; it is no disgrace even to a king that he should make amends if he was wrong in the first instance.
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