Modal

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -əʊdÉ™l

Origin

From Medieval Latin modalis ("pertaining to a mode"), from Latin modus ("mode"); see mode. Compare to French, Spanish and Portuguese modal and Italian modale.

Full definition of modal

Adjective

1. of, or relating to a mode or modus
2. (grammar) of, relating to, or describing the mood of a clause
3. (grammar) modal verb
• 1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational Grammar: A First CourseUsing the same type of distributional criterion, we could argue that only a Verb (in its base form) can occur in the position marked — in (23) below to complete the sentence:
  (23)     They/it can —
  ...
  Conversely, the only type of word which could be used to begin a three-word sentence such as (25) below:
  (25)     â€” I be frank?
  is a Modal: cf. ...
4. (music) of, relating to, or composed in the musical modi by which an octave is divided, associated with emotional moods in Ancient — and in medieval ecclesiastical music
5. (logic) of, or relating to the modality between propositions
6. (statistics) relating to the statistical mode.
7. (computing) Having separate modes in which user input has different effects.
8. (computer science) requiring immediate user interaction (often used as modal dialog or modal window)
9. (metaphysics) Relating to the form of a thing rather to any of its attributes

Synonyms

• forming
• conditioning

Derived terms

Related terms

Noun

1. (logic) A modal proposition
2. (linguistics) A modal form, notably a modal auxiliary.

Anagrams

• dolma
• domal
• MOALD