Mode (?), 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.
The duty of itself being resolved on, the mode of doing it may easily be
found.
Jer. Taylor.
A table richly spread in regal mode.
Milton.
2. Prevailing popular custom; fashion, especially in the phrase
the mode.
The easy, apathetic graces of a man of the mode.
Macaulay. 3. Variety; gradation; degree. Pope.
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.
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.
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.
6. (Gram.) Same as Mood.
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.
&fist; In modern music, only the major and
the minor mode, of whatever key, are recognized.
8. A kind of silk. See Alamode, n.
Syn.
-- Method; manner. See Method.
Hear it pronounced