mode

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A manner, way, or method of doing or acting: modern modes of travel. See Synonyms at method.
2. n. A particular form, variety, or manner: a mode of expression.
3. n. A given condition of functioning; a status: The spacecraft was in its recovery mode.
4. n. The current or customary fashion or style. See Synonyms at fashion.
5. n. Music Any of certain fixed arrangements of the diatonic tones of an octave, as the major and minor scales of Western music.
6. n. Music A patterned arrangement, as the one characteristic of the music of classical Greece or the medieval Christian Church.
7. n. Philosophy The particular appearance, form, or manner in which an underlying substance, or a permanent aspect or attribute of it, is manifested.
8. n. Logic See modality.
9. n. Logic The arrangement or order of the propositions in a syllogism according to both quality and quantity.
10. n. Statistics The value or item occurring most frequently in a series of observations or statistical data.
11. n. Mathematics The number or range of numbers in a set that occurs the most frequently.
12. n. Geology The mineral composition of a sample of igneous rock.
13. n. Physics Any of numerous patterns of wave motion or vibration.
14. n. Grammar Mood.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A manner of acting or doing; way of performing or effecting anything; method; way.
2. n. Customary manner; prevailing style; fashion.
3. n. In grammar, the designation, by the form of verb, of the manner of our conception of an event or fact, whether as certain, contingent, possible, desirable, or the like. The modes of the English verb are the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative; and other verbal phrases are usually called by the name of modes, as potential, conditional, and so on. See these terms. Also commonly, but less properly, mood.
4. n. The natural disposition or the manner of existence or action of anything; a form: as, heat is a mode of motion; reflection is a mode of consciousness.
5. n. A combination of ideas. See the quotations.
6. n. In logic:
7. n. A modification or determination of a proposition with reference to possibility and necessity.
8. n. A variety of syllogism. See mood, the more usual but less proper form.
9. n. The consignificate of a part of speech.
10. n. An accidental determination.
11. n. In music:
12. n. A species or form of scale; a method of dividing the interval of the octave for melodic purposes; an arrangement of tones within an octave at certain fixed intervals from each other. Three great systems of modes are to be distinguished —the ancient Greek, the Gregorian, medieval, or ecclesiastical and the modern. These three were successively derived from each other, but with noteworthy changes of both principle and nomenclature. In the Greek system each mode consisted of two tetrachords (two whole steps and one half-step in each) plus one whole step (the diazeuctie tone). The nature and the name of the mode varied according to the tetrachord used as a basis and according to the position of the diazeuctie tone, or, in other words, according to the relative order of the whole steps and half-steps. When the diazeuctic tone lay between the two component tetrachords, the mode was named simply from the tetrachord used —the mode containing Dorian tetrachords was called Dorian or Doric. etc.; but when it lay below or above both of them, the prefixes hypo- and hyper- respectively were added, as Hypophrygian, Hyperlydian, etc. Below is a table of the nine original modes, reckoned upward, the whole steps being indicated by —, the half-steps by ⌣, the constituent tetrachords by , and the diazeuctic tone by +:
13. n. These modes were embodied in scales of about two octaves, sometimes called transposing scales, which were more or less susceptible of transposition. By the later theorists fifteen such scales were recognized, each derived from one of the foregoing modes, and beginning at adifferent pitch, each a half-step higher than the preceding. These scales, though not always differing from each other in mode, but only in relative pitch, were also called modes, and were named like the modes themselves. Assuming the lowest tone of the lowest scale to be A, the series of later scales or “modes” would be:
14. n. Hypodorian, embodying mode IV. above, A.
15. n. Hypoionian, Hypoiastian, or lower Hypophrygian (mode V.), B♭.
16. n. Hypophrygian (mode V.), B.
17. n. Hypoæolian, or lower Hypolydian (mode VI.), C.
18. n. Hypolydian (mode VI.), C♮.
19. n. Dorian (mode I.), D.
20. n. Ionian, Iastian, or lower Phrygian (mode II.), E♭.
21. n. Phrygian (mode II.), E.
22. n. Æolian, or lower Lydian (mode III.), F.
23. n. Lydian (mode III.), F♮.
24. n. Hyperdorian, or Mixolydian (mode VII.), G.
25. n. Hyperionian, Hyperiastian, or higher Mixolydian (mode VII.), G♮.
26. n. Hyperphrygian, or Hypermixolydian (mode VIII.), A.
27. n. Hyperæolian, or lower Hyperlydian (mode IX.), B♭.
28. n. Hyperlydian (mode IX.), B.
29. n. The fact that the term mode has been applied from very early times both to the ideal octave-forms, or true modes, and to the practical scales or tonalities based upon them has led to great confusion. Furthermore, the extant data of the subject are fragmentary and obscure, so that authorities differ widely. (The summary here given is taken chiefly from Alfred Richter.) The esthetic and moral value of the different modes was much discussed by the Greeks, and melodies were written in one or other of the modes according to the sentiment intended to be expressed.
30. n. The Gregorian, medieval, or ecclesiastical system was originally intended partly to follow the ancient system. Several of the old modes wore retained, but subsequently received curiously transposed names. The system was initiated by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in the latter part of the fourth century, perfected by Gregory the Great about 600, and still further extended between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. It exercised a deep influence upon the beginnings of modern music, and is still in use in the Roman Catholic Church. The ecclesiastical modes differ from each other both in the relative position of their “finals” or key-notes and in the order of their whole steps and half-steps. They are authentic when the final is the lowest tone of the ambitus or compass, and plagal when it is the fourth tone from the bottom. Four authentic modes were established by Ambrose, the four corresponding plagal modes were added by Gregory, and six others were subsequently appended, making fourteen in all. In each mode certain tones are regarded as specially important — the final, on which every melody must end, and which is nearly equivalent to the modern key-note; the dominant, or principal reciting-note; and the mediant and participant, on which phrases (other than the first and last) may begin and end: these are generically called modulations. All the modes are susceptible of transposition. Assuming the final of the first mode to be A, the full series is as follows (finals are marked F, dominants D,) and mediants M):
31. n. *Not used, on account of the tritone between B and F.
32. n. In the modern system only two of the historic modes are retained — the major, equivalent to the Greek Lydian and the medieval Ionian, and the minor (in its full form), equivalent to the Greek and medieval Æolian. These modes differ from each other in the order of their whole steps and half-steps, as follows:
33. n. See major, minor, and scale.
34. n. In medieval music, a term by which the relative time-value or rhythmic relation of notes was indicated. Two kinds of modes were recognized: the great, fixing the relation between the notes called “large” and “long,” and the less, fixing that between those called “long” and “breve”; and each of these kinds might also be perfect, making the longer note equal to three of the shorter, or imperfect, making it equal to two of the shorter.
35. n. Measure; melody; harmony.
36. n. In lace-making:
37. n. An unusual decorative stitch or fashion, characteristic of the pattern of any special sort of lace; especially, a small piece of such decorative work inserted in the pattern of lace. Hence, because such decorative insertions are more open than the rest of the pattern, mode is used as equivalent to jour.
38. n. The filling of openwork meshes or the like between the solid parts of the pattern.
39. n. A garment for women's wear, apparently a mantle with a hood, worn in England in the eighteenth century.
40. n. plural In the philosophy of Locke. See def. 5
41. n. Synonyms Method, Way, etc. (see manner), process.
42. To conform to the mode or fashion: with an indefinite it.
43. n. A Middle English form of mood.
44. n. In mathematics:
45. n. The most frequent measure; the class with greatest frequency.
46. n. The point at which a curve, indicating frequencies of occurrence of a variable event, reaches its maximum. In the normal frequency curve (see Quételet's curve), the average is at the same time the mode, while in skew curves the average and mode do not coincide.
47. n. In a table of frequencies which gives a list of the different quantities appearing, with a statement of the number of times that each appeared, the one which occurs most often.
48. n. In biom., that statistical value of a character which is most prevalent in a group of organisms.
49. n. In petrography, in the quantitative classification of igneous rocks (see rock), the actual mineral composition of a rock in distinction from the norm, with which it may or may not coincide.

Wiktionary

1. n. Style or fashion.
2. n. music One of several ancient scales, one of which corresponds to the modern major scale and one to the natural minor scale
3. n. A particular means of accomplishing something.
4. n. statistics The most frequently occurring value in a distribution
5. n. mathematics, physics A state of a system that is represented by an eigenfunction of that system.
6. n. computing One of various related sets of rules for processing data.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Manner of doing or being; method; form; fashion; custom; way; style.
2. n. Prevailing popular custom; fashion, especially in the phrase the mode.
3. n. Variety; gradation; degree.
4. n. (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.
5. n. (Logic) The form in which the proposition connects the predicate and subject, whether by simple, contingent, or necessary assertion; the form of syllogism, as determined by the quantity and quality of the constituent proposition; mood.
6. n. (Gram.) Same as Mood.
7. n. (Mus.) The scale as affected by the various positions in it of the minor intervals; , of ancient Greek music.
8. n. A kind of silk. See Alamode, n.
9. n. (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.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a particular functioning condition or arrangement
2. n. how something is done or how it happens
3. n. the most frequent value of a random variable
4. n. verb inflections that express how the action or state is conceived by the speaker
5. n. a classification of propositions on the basis of whether they claim necessity or possibility or impossibility
6. n. any of various fixed orders of the various diatonic notes within an octave