instantiation

from WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)

instantiation
    n 1: a representation of an idea in the form of an instance of
         it; "how many instantiations were found?"

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

instantiation
instantiate

   <programming> Producing a more defined version of some object
   by replacing variables with values (or other variables).

   1. In {object-oriented programming}, producing a particular
   {object} from its {class template}.  This involves allocation
   of a structure with the types specified by the template, and
   initialisation of {instance variables} with either default
   values or those provided by the class's {constructor}
   function.

   2. In {unification}, (as used in {logic programming}, {type
   checking} and {type inference}), binding a {logic variable}
   ({type variable}) to some value (type).

   (1995-03-28)