Definitions

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

  • noun The act or process of modifying or the condition of being modified.
  • noun A change or a result produced by modifying.
  • noun A change undergone by a word that is borrowed from another language.
  • noun A phonological change undergone by a word or morpheme when it is used in a construction, as the change of will to 'll in they'll.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Determination by a mode or quality; qualification.
  • noun The act or process of modifying or altering in character, form, or function; the act or process of producing variation.
  • noun Alteration or change: often specifically in the sense of abatement or reduction.
  • noun The result of variation or alteration; that which marks or shows variation of character, form, or function; mode, form, or condition reached through process of change, or through being modified.
  • noun In Scots law, the determining of the amount of the stipend of the minister of a parish. This is fixed by a decision of the Court of Teinds, called a decree of modification.
  • noun In music, same as temperament.
  • noun Synonyms Change, alteration, variation, qualification.
  • noun In biology, a change which is brought about in a living being by its own activity and is not transmitted to descendants, as contrasted with a variation regarded as a congenital change which is not the effect of the activity of the organism and is transmitted to descendants; an acquired character.

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

  • noun The act of modifying, or the state of being modified; a change
  • noun Something which has been modified; a modified form or condition; state as modified.
  • noun (Gram.) The alteration of the meaning of a word or phrase by another word or phrase; -- usually a restriction of the scope of the word modified.

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

  • noun the act or result of modifying or the condition of being modified
  • noun an alteration or adjustment to something
  • noun a change to an organism as a result of its environment that is not transmissable to offspring
  • noun linguistics a change to a word when it is borrowed by another language
  • noun linguistics the change undergone by a word when used in a construction (for instance am => 'm in I'm)

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

  • noun slightly modified copy; not an exact copy
  • noun the grammatical relation that exists when a word qualifies the meaning of the phrase
  • noun the act of making something different (as e.g. the size of a garment)
  • noun an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French modification, from Latin modificatio ("a measuring"), from modificare ("to limit, control, modify"); see modify.

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