entitás

Entitás is the Hungarian term for entity, used across disciplines to denote something that exists or can be treated as a distinct object in discourse. The concept covers both concrete things, such as a person or an object, and abstract items, such as a value, event, or idea. In everyday and academic usage, entitás embodies the idea of a bearer of identity within a given context.

Etymology and usage: The word is a direct loan from Latin entitas and has become standard in Hungarian philosophical, scientific, and technical writing.

In philosophy and ontology, an entitás is a fundamental unit of being that may instantiate properties or engage in relations. Ontological theories differentiate among various kinds of entities, including objects, properties, processes, and events, depending on their framework and commitments.

In information systems and data modeling, an entitás is a data abstraction representing a real-world object or concept about which information is stored. In entity-relationship modeling, entities have attributes and participate in relationships, enabling structured representation of knowledge or data. The term is also used in databases to denote rows or records of a table, viewed as entities with a primary key.

Examples: a customer, a product, a transaction, or a city can be treated as entitások in a data model; in discourse, a named person can be an entity referent.

See also: entity (philosophy), ontology, data modeling, entity-relationship model, referent.