mode

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA ^(key): /məʊd/, SAMPA: /m@Ud/
• (US) IPA ^(key): /moʊd/, SAMPA: /moUd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

Singular mode

Plural modes

1. (countable) A mode is a specific way of doing something.

   The study combines two different research modes: oral history and written history.

   The machine is in warm-up mode right now.

   A modern city offers many different modes of transport from bicycle lanes to high speed trains.

   Modern medicine must be seen as part of the capitalist mode of production.

   There is a difference in English between casual and formal modes of speech.

2. (countable) A mode is a fashion or style.

   She was always dressed in the latest mode.

3. (countable) A mode is a specific type or form of something.

   Heat is a mode of energy transfer, like work, not a substance or other seawater property.

4. (countable); (music) A mode is specific a kind scale.

   The Mixolydian mode is a good way for inducing a bluesey kind of mood.

5. (countable); (statistics) The mode is the number that occurs most often in a group of numbers.

   In a normal distribution, with large sets, the mean, median and mode will typically be the same value.

6. (countable); (grammar) A mode is specific a kind of clause that shows how the speaker feels about it. Modes show whether something is true, probably true, a wish, etc. Usually called mood.

   In Finnish, for example, the conditional mode is used both in the main clause and the subordinate.

7. (countable); (geology) The mode of a rock is the different minerals in it.
8. (countable); (physics) A mode is a specific pattern of wave movement.

   Under normal circumstances, there is no coupling between the two modes, which have different propagation constants.

Synonyms

• method

Related words

• modal
• modality