the distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity; you can lose your identity when you join the army

[ Syn: personal identity , individuality ]

the individual characteristics by which a thing or person is recognized or known; geneticists only recently discovered the identity of the gene that causes it; it was too dark to determine his identity; she guessed the identity of his lover'

an operator that leaves unchanged the element on which it operates; the identity under numerical multiplication is 1

[ Syn: identity element , identity operator ]

exact sameness; they shared an identity of interests

[ Syn: identicalness , indistinguishability ]