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mode

Mode Mode (m[=o]d), n. [L. modus a measure, due or proper measure, bound, manner, form; akin to E. mete: cf. F. mode. See Mete, and cf. Commodious, Mood in grammar, Modus.] 1. Manner of doing or being; method; form; fashion; custom; way; style; as, the mode of speaking; the mode of dressing. [1913 Webster]

The duty of itself being resolved on, the mode of doing it may easily be found. --Jer. Taylor. [1913 Webster]

A table richly spread in regal mode. --Milton. [1913 Webster]

2. Prevailing popular custom; fashion, especially in the phrase the mode. [1913 Webster]

The easy, apathetic graces of a man of the mode. --Macaulay. [1913 Webster]

3. Variety; gradation; degree. --Pope. [1913 Webster]

4. (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. [1913 Webster]

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. [1913 Webster]

5. (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. [1913 Webster]

6. (Gram.) Same as Mood. [1913 Webster]

7. (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. [1913 Webster]

Note: In modern music, only the major and the minor mode, of whatever key, are recognized. [1913 Webster]

8. A kind of silk. See Alamode, n. [1913 Webster]

9. (Gram.) the value of the variable in a frequency distribution or probability distribution, at which the probability or frequency has a maximum. The maximum may be local or global. Distributions with only one such maximum are called unimodal; with two maxima, bimodal, and with more than two, multimodal. [PJC]

Syn: Method; manner. See Method. [1913 Webster] [1913 Webster]