Some decades have passed since the concept of "named entity" was used for the
first time. Since then, new lines of research have emerged in this environment,
such as linking the (named) entity mentions in a text collection with their
corresponding knowledge-base entries. However, this introduces problems with
respect to a consensus on the definition of the concept of "entity" in the
literature. This paper aims to highlight the importance of formalizing the
concept of "entity" and the benefits it would bring to the Entity Linking
community, in particular relating to the construction of gold standards for
evaluation purposes.