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.
☞ 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.