entitiessometimes

Entitiessometimes is a neologism used in information science, ontology design, and natural language processing to refer to entities that do not have a persistent or universally observable existence across all contexts. The term blends "entities" and "sometimes" to emphasize context-dependence and temporal variability of referents. In data modelling, entitiessometimes describes optional relationships or nullable fields where an entity may be present in some records but omitted in others.

Definition and scope: An entitiessometimes is an entity whose existence is conditional on context, user input, or time. It is distinct from a persistent entity, which is always present, and from a fictional or hypothetical entity, which may not correspond to a real instance.

In practice, the concept helps address ambiguity: when an entity is not explicitly described in a discourse, systems may treat it as entitiessometimes present but not guaranteed. This has implications for knowledge graphs, query answering, and temporal databases.

Examples: A product feature mentioned in a review only if the reviewer cares about it; a seasonal animal species present only during certain months; a software capability behind a feature flag.

Applications: ontology design, data integration, natural language understanding, temporal reasoning, and probabilistic data models that represent optional entities with uncertainty.

Related terms: contingency, optionality, existential quantification, nullable relationships, provisional entities.

Criticism: Because entitiessometimes is not a standard term, its definition can vary and may complicate interoperability. It is typically used as an informal descriptor rather than a formal axiom.