"discrete entity" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It can be used when describing something that is separate, distinct, and individually identifiable from other things. Example: In the world of technology, every line of code is considered a discrete entity that contributes to the functioning of a software program.
But if it does not remain a discrete entity within government, its more subtle concerns will be doubtless be marginalised.
We become consciously aware of ourselves as a discrete entity only through language – and language is inherently inter-subjective; it is a social practice.
For some it means hard polytheism: every god and goddess from every religion past and present is a discrete entity with his or her own personality and attributes.
But HAL was a discrete entity, a genie in a bottle, something we imagined owning or being assigned.
We're used to thinking that each person speaks an individual language — his mother tongue — and that this mother tongue is a discrete entity, with a vocabulary manipulated by a fixed grammar.
Finally, his hysterical notion of Al Qaeda as a terrifying Mafia-like octopus requires revision in the light of such recent political analyses as Jason Burke's "Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror," which persuasively presents Al Qaeda as a vague rubric for disparate terror groups rather than a discrete entity.
Paul Muldoon, another great contemporary poet and The New Yorker's poetry editor, had more sympathy than Chiasson for claims about the poem's stand-alone magnificence, and hit upon an apt image for the hermeneutic quandaries it poses: "I do think 'Pale Fire' is a quite wonderful poem, though it's hard to read it as an entirely discrete entity.
We imagined discrete entities.
They remain discrete entities, an awkward cocktail party before the drinks have kicked in.
Oprah and her body are not separate, discrete entities; Oprah's fat is not a parasite or last season's outerwear.
Swimming against the biomedical currents of the time, they have argued that mental illnesses are not discrete entities like the polio virus with their own natural histories.
