mode

1
[ mohd ]
See synonyms for: modemodestmodes on Thesaurus.com

noun
  1. a manner of acting or doing; method; way: modern modes of transportation.

  2. a particular type or form of something: Heat is a mode of motion.

  1. a designated condition or status, as for performing a task or responding to a problem: a machine in the automatic mode.

  2. Philosophy.

    • appearance, form, or disposition taken by a thing, or by one of its essential properties or attributes.

    • (in the philosophy of Spinoza) one of the nonessential qualifications of God, contingent upon other modes.: Compare attribute (def. 9).

  3. Logic.

  4. Music. any of various arrangements of the diatonic tones of an octave, differing from one another in the order of the whole steps and half steps; a type or variation of a scale.

  5. Grammar. mood2 (def. 1).

  6. Statistics. the value of the variate at which a relative or absolute maximum occurs in the frequency distribution of the variate.

  7. Petrography. the actual mineral composition of a rock, expressed in percentages by weight.

  8. Physics. any of the distinct patterns of oscillation that a given periodically varying system can have.

Origin of mode

1
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English mod(e), from Old French or directly from Latin modus “measured amount, limit, manner, kind, tone”

synonym study For mode

1. See method.

Words that may be confused with mode

Words Nearby mode

Other definitions for mode (2 of 2)

mode2
[ mohd ]

noun
  1. fashion or style in manners, dress, etc.: He was much concerned to keep up with the latest mode.

  2. a light gray or drab color.

adjective
  1. See entry at à la mode.

Origin of mode

2
First recorded in 1635–45; from French, from Latin modus; see origin at mode1

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use mode in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for mode

mode

/ (məʊd) /


noun
  1. a manner or way of doing, acting, or existing

  2. the current fashion or style

  1. music

    • any of the various scales of notes within one octave, esp any of the twelve natural diatonic scales taken in ascending order used in plainsong, folk song, and art music until 1600

    • (in the music of classical Greece) any of the descending diatonic scales from which the liturgical modes evolved

    • either of the two main scale systems in music since 1600: major mode; minor mode

  2. logic linguistics another name for modality (def. 3), mood 2 (def. 2)

  3. philosophy a complex combination of ideas the realization of which is not determined by the component ideas

  4. that one of a range of values that has the highest frequency as determined statistically: Compare mean 3 (def. 4), median (def. 6)

  5. the quantitative mineral composition of an igneous rock

  6. physics one of the possible configurations of a travelling or stationary wave

  7. physics one of the fundamental vibrations

Origin of mode

1
C14: from Latin modus measure, manner

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for mode

mode

[ mōd ]


  1. The value that occurs most frequently in a data set. For example, in the set 125, 140, 172, 164, 140, 110, the mode is 140. Compare arithmetic mean average median.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Cultural definitions for mode

mode

In statistics, the most frequently appearing value in a set of numbers or data points. In the numbers 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 4, 9, 6, 8, and 6, the mode is 6, because it appears more often than any of the other figures. (See average; compare mean and median.)

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.