What does "mode" mean?
Mode: Prevailing popular custom; fashion, especially in the phrase the mode. The easy, apathetic graces of a man of the mode. Macaulay.
Additional senses
- 2.Variety; gradation; degree. Pope.
- 3.(Metaph.) Any combination of qualities or relations, considered apart from the substance to which they belong, and treated as entities; more generally, condition, or state of being; manner or form of arrangement or manifestation; form, as opposed to matter. Modes I call such complex ideas, which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependencies on, or affections of, substances. Locke.
- 4.(Logic) The form in which the proposition connects the predicate and subject, whether by simple, contingent, or necessary assertion; the form of the syllogism, as determined by the quantity and quality of the constituent proposition; mood.
- 5.(Gram.) Same as Mood.
- 6.(Mus.) The scale as affected by the various positions in it of the minor intervals; as, the Dorian mode, the Ionic mode, etc., of ancient Greek music. Note: In modern music, only the major and the minor mode, of whatever key, are recognized.
- 7.A kind of silk. See Alamode, n. See Method.
Sources
- Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).
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- Published: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00 · Modified: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00