identity definition

1. the distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity
• examples: you can lose your identity when you join the army
2. the individual characteristics by which a thing or person is recognized or known
• examples: geneticists only recently discovered the identity of the gene that causes it
• examples: it was too dark to determine his identity
• examples: she guessed the identity of his lover
3. an operator that leaves unchanged the element on which it operates
• examples: the identity under numerical multiplication is 1
4. exact sameness
• examples: they shared an identity of interests