mode
Pluralmodes
- 1A setting or state in which a device, program, or game works in a particular way, often chosen for a specific purpose.
She enabled power-saving mode to make the battery last longer.
The printer has a draft mode that uses less ink.
UsageUsually no article before a named mode: put the phone in airplane mode, switch to night mode, take it out of sleep mode.
Note
On a phone or a car, a mode is a named bundle of settings switched on all at once: airplane mode, night mode. Mat Gallagher, testing Mercedes' autonomous driving in 2024, writes that the car was "placed into its Level 2 driving mode."
- 2A particular way of accomplishing or carrying out something.
The committee chose a different mode of communication for urgent updates.
Each mode of transport has its own advantages and costs.
UsageUsually mode of + a noun or -ing form: a mode of transport, a mode of getting to work.
Similarmethod, means, manner, way, form
Note
Most of the technical senses branch out from this general meaning, including signals, data, devices, grammar and philosophy. The Journal of the Horticultural Society of London in 1855 offers "mode of Protecting Wall-Trees from Spring-Frosts."
- 3A particular condition of being, or one's current frame of mind.
After the loss, the whole team slipped into a defensive mode.
She shifts into planning mode whenever a deadline approaches.
UsageUsually after in or into, with the state named first and often no article: in crisis mode, went into survival mode.
- 4Any of several kinds of musical scale, such as the modes of Western music, which include today's major and minor scales, and those of ancient Greece.
Much like different color palettes give paintings distinct moods, each mode lends a melody its own character.
The composer wrote the piece in a minor mode to give it a somber feel.
Jazz musicians often improvise by moving between different modes.
Note
These are the scales behind much Western music. Each is set by its own order of whole and half steps: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian and the rest. Two are better known under modern names, since Ionian is the major scale and Aeolian the natural minor.
- 5A prevailing style, fashion, or popular trend.
The magazine declared that wide-legged trousers would be the mode for the coming season.
Dining late became the mode among the city's wealthy families.
UsageUsually the mode (very much the mode this winter) or the prevailing mode; in fashion and in style are the everyday phrases.
Similarfashion, vogue, trend, rage, style
Note
Edith Van Dyne's Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman (1922) has a dress "richly trimmed according to the prevailing mode." This sense was borrowed separately, from French mode ("fashion, trend"), not with the musical and "way of doing" senses. It usually appears as the mode or the prevailing mode, while everyday speech prefers in fashion or in style.
Less common meanings
- 6The value that occurs most frequently in a data set or distribution.
The teacher asked students to calculate the mean, median, and mode of the test scores.
Because two values tied for most frequent, the data set had two modes.
Note
The mode is one of the three standard averages, alongside the mean and the median. Unlike the other two, it may not exist at all, or there may be several. A set where every value appears once has no mode, and a tie for highest frequency produces two or more. It is the only average that also works for unordered categories, like the most common answer on a survey.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- Mean, median and mode are three standard averages. openstax.org
- A finite numerical data set can have no mode or several modes, unlike its conventional mean and median. abs.gov.au
- Under the usual classroom convention, a data set with no repeated values has no mode. xlinux.nist.gov
- Values tied for the highest frequency can produce multiple modes. openstax.org
- The median also works for ordered categories. Mode alone among these three works for unordered categories. en.wikipedia.org
- 7A verb form determined by how its clause relates to the speaker's wish, intention, or claim about what is real.
The subjunctive mode appears in sentences expressing doubt or hypothetical situations.
Latin verbs inflect for mode, distinguishing plain statements from commands and wishes.
UsageMood is the more familiar term (the subjunctive mood); mode keeps it apart from mood as a feeling.
Similarmood
Note
Grammarians use the word for the category that marks a speaker's stance toward a statement: asserted as fact, wished for, commanded, or merely supposed. The category may be shown by inflection, as in Latin, or by auxiliaries.
- 8In mathematics and physics, a state of a system that is described by one of the system's eigenfunctions.
Solving the eigenvalue problem gave the engineers the first five modes of the tower, each with its own natural frequency.
Any motion of the string can be written as a sum of modes, though here the fundamental mode dominates.
Note
Each mode comes paired with an eigenvalue, which can determine a measurable quantity: the frequency at which a structure vibrates, or the energy of a stationary quantum state. In mechanics the usual phrase is normal modes, and the one with the lowest frequency is the fundamental mode.
- 9A woman's mantle or cloak fitted with a hood.
- 10Something that exists only as a quality or property of a substance, not independently.
- 11In lace-making, a small decorative piece that is set into the larger pattern of the lace.
- 12In lace-making, the openwork that fills the spaces between the solid parts of a pattern.
Practice
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Origins
Latin modus ("measure, due measure, rhythm, melody") reached English through Old French mode. The English word modus is its doublet.
From French mode ("fashion, trend").
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- English mode in the fashion sense comes from French mode, meaning fashion or trend. en.wiktionary.org