modern

Pluralmoderns

1. 1
   present dayadjective

   Belonging to the present or recent period in time and style, rather than to ancient or older times.

   The museum's modern wing contrasts sharply with its older galleries.

   Modern medicine has extended life expectancy in much of the world.

   Similarcontemporary, current, new

   Oppositeancient, old, traditional, old-fashioned

   Note

   The everyday sense keeps its Latin root close: modo meant "just now," so what counts as modern moves forward with the present moment. That is why Richard Jefferies in 1879 could picture the men of an old flintlock's day as giants beside any "modern mortal." Source

   Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts

   • Modern ultimately derives from Latin modo, meaning "just now." en.wiktionary.org
   • The Jefferies passage appeared in The Amateur Poacher, first published in book form in 1879. biodiversitylibrary.org
   • Jefferies describes the old gun's contemporaries as giants compared with a "modern mortal"; the surrounding passage identifies the gun as a flintlock. gutenberg.org
2. 2
   history periodadjective

   Belonging to the period of history following the Middle Ages, conventionally from about 1500 to the present, as historians use the term.

   Her thesis focused on modern European politics in the decades after 1800.

   The course divides the past into ancient, medieval, and modern periods.

   UsageCommon in modern history and early modern, the period from about 1500 to about 1800.

   Oppositeancient

   Note

   Historians use it as a fixed label rather than a moving one. The modern period conventionally runs from around 1500 to the present, so a historian's "modern" can include events five centuries old. It follows the medieval era and includes the early modern era, though some historians reserve "modern" for the years since about 1800. In a course title or thesis it names a stretch of time, not a style, and that is the clearest way to tell it from the everyday "recent" meaning.

3. 3
   person todaynouncountable

   A person who lives in the present age, as contrasted with people of earlier historical eras.

   The novel imagines how a modern would react to life in a medieval town.

   Unlike the ancients, moderns take electricity and instant communication for granted.

   UsageMostly plural, in we moderns or the moderns, often set against the ancients.

   Oppositeancient

   Note

   Henry Fielding's "us moderns" in Tom Jones (1749) and John Albert Wilson's "we moderns" (1951) both place the speaker among them, usually against the ancients. With the definite article, the moderns can name present-day practitioners as a group, as when Edward Capell questions why "the moderns," meaning recent editors, dropped the repeats in a final couplet of Shakespeare's.

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