The term is broad in scope and may refer to animals; natural features such as mountains; inanimate objects such as tables; numbers or sets as symbols written on a paper; human contrivances such as laws, corporations and academic disciplines; or supernatural beings such as gods and spirits.
The words ontic and entity are derived respectively from the ancient Greek and Latin present participles that mean "being".
In an ontic inquiry... one asks about the properties or the physical relations and structures peculiar to some entity – in the pen's case, for example, we might make the following ontic observations about it: it is black, full of blue ink, and sitting on top of my desk.
In politics, entity is used as term for territorial divisions of some countries (e.g. Bosnia and Herzegovina).
In medicine, a disease entity is an illness due to a particular definite cause or to a specific pathological process.