Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The fact, state, or quality of being modal.
  • noun A tendency to conform to a general pattern or belong to a particular group or category.
  • noun Logic The classification of propositions on the basis of whether they assert or deny the possibility, impossibility, contingency, or necessity of their content.
  • noun The ceremonial forms, protocols, or conditions that surround formal agreements or negotiations.
  • noun Medicine A therapeutic method or agent, such as surgery, chemotherapy, or electrotherapy, that involves the physical treatment of a disorder.
  • noun Physiology Any of the various types of sensation, such as vision or hearing.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In psychology:
  • noun The nature or character of sensation or stimulus as determined by the sense-department to which it belongs or appeals: a term proposed by Helmholtz, to avoid a confusing use of quality.
  • noun Hence— the sense-department itself: as, sensations of different modalities.
  • noun The fact of being a mode.
  • noun A determination of an accident; a mode.
  • noun Mode in the logical sense; that wherein problematical, assertoric, and apodictic judgments are distinguished.
  • noun In civil law, the quality of being limited as to time or place of performance, or, more loosely, of being suspended by a condition: said of a promise.
  • noun 5. Same as modalism.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being modal.
  • noun (Logic & Metaph.) A modal relation or quality; a mode or point of view under which an object presents itself to the mind. According to Kant, the quality of propositions, as assertory, problematical, or apodeictic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun the state of being modal
  • noun logic the classification of propositions on the basis on whether they claim possibility, impossibility, contingency or necessity; mode
  • noun linguistics the inflection of a verb that shows how its action is conceived by the speaker; mood
  • noun medicine any method of therapy that involves therapeutic treatment
  • noun any of the senses (such as sight or taste)
  • noun semiotics a particular way in which the information is to be encoded for presentation to humans, i.e. to the type of sign and to the status of reality ascribed to or claimed by a sign, text or genre
  • noun theology the organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations
  • noun music the subject concerning certain diatonic scales known as musical modes
  • noun sociology a concept in Anthony Giddens structuration theory

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a method of therapy that involves physical or electrical therapeutic treatment
  • noun a particular sense
  • noun verb inflections that express how the action or state is conceived by the speaker
  • noun a classification of propositions on the basis of whether they claim necessity or possibility or impossibility

Etymologies

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Examples

  • I have an inkling that a narrative dynamics based in modality could be factored up to a narrative logic, an informal logic that I'm sorely tempted to call a "suppositional calculus".

    Archive 2010-01-01 Hal Duncan 2010

  • Each Introit retains its Gregorian psalmtone verse, whose proper modality is reflected in the harmonized Introit itself.

    Introits for Treble Choir 2009

  • I have an inkling that a narrative dynamics based in modality could be factored up to a narrative logic, an informal logic that I'm sorely tempted to call a "suppositional calculus".

    Modality and Hamlet Hal Duncan 2010

  • This neutralisation or masking of the “could not happen” or “could not have happened” modality is the basis of dewarping, the cancellation of warp (in this case credibility).

    Archive 2009-06-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • My most effective secret weapon treatment modality is osteopathic manual medicine.

    All Things Girl » All Things Girl » Blog Archive » Guest Post: Dr. Janine Talty, D. O., M. P. H. 2009

  • This neutralisation or masking of the “could not happen” or “could not have happened” modality is the basis of dewarping, the cancellation of warp (in this case credibility).

    Notes Toward a Theory of Narrative Modality Hal Duncan 2009

  • This modality is often superior to other imaging techniques.

    The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2003 2003

  • This modality is especially valuable for detailed imaging of the brain and the spinal cord, for example in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).

    The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2003 2003

  • Q No, I'm just wondering whether the leaders would actually get the word modality in.

    Dee Dee Myers Press Briefing ITY National Archives 1993

  • Way I see it, mimesis takes place in *any* narrative, suspension-of-disbelief just being the alethic modality aka subjunctivity of "did happen" we surrender to as readers, project onto the text.

    "Mimetic Fiction" 2009

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