{
  "id": "individual.entity",
  "term": "individual",
  "sense": "entity",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 5,
  "arena": "everyday",
  "domain": "common",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a single entity that is part of a set and is distinct from the others",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "part.relation",
      "sets.grouped",
      "distinct.attribute",
      "entities.object",
      "others.distinct-entities",
      "single.quantity"
    ],
    "interaction": "the part relation positions an entity within a collective, the distinct attribute differentiates it from others in that group, and single quantity ensures it is one of those entities, yielding an individual instance within a set",
    "novel_properties": [
      "singular instancehood",
      "set-membership with uniqueness",
      "non-identical occurrence"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The Higgs boson was identified among trillions of particle collisions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in 2012.",
      "domain": "physics"
    },
    {
      "text": "Patient zero of the 1980s HIV outbreak in North America was identified as a flight attendant named Gaëtan Dugas.",
      "domain": "biology"
    },
    {
      "text": "In the 2020 U.S. Census, each person was counted as one household member, distinct by name and age.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "individual",
    "individuals"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "components",
      "note": "Added missing constitutive components that the definition relies on: entities.object, others.distinct-entities, and single.quantity. Definition remained factually accurate and concise."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-individual.entity"
}