modo

Forms

modo m (plural modos)^[1] Old Spanish had an inherited form muedo, used by Berceo, Juan Ruiz and the Cancionero de Baena.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin modus (“measure; manner”), taken in the 15th century.^[4][5][6][3] The inherited form was Old Spanish muedo, which did not survive.^[7][2] Wiktionary instead derives the modern word from the Old Spanish one.^[1]

The inherited word is also Old French muef and Occitan mo, and the Old Catalan form was mou;^[7][8] Catalan then took the learned Catalan modo (1406) and later mode.^[7][8] Italian modo and Portuguese modo are learned like the Spanish word.^[7][9]

The Latin word first meant “a measured amount, size, limit”.^[10][11] It goes back to Proto-Italic *medo- (“measure, judgement”), from Proto-Indo-European *med- (“to measure”), and is related to meditor and Ancient Greek μέδομαι (médomai).^[10][1][11] The sense “manner, way of acting” grew out of “measure, limit”.^[4][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Breve diccionario dates the word 1490.^[4] The CDH's 13th-century hits are all in Latin charters (consimili modo, tali modo), but the Old Spanish Textual Archive has the form from 1272, and the DEMel has a document of 1286.^[13][14][15] Nebrija in about 1495 gives it as a synonym: manera, modo o forma, Latin modus.^[16]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 explained it as “manner or form”, as in desse modo “in that way”.^[17] Autoridades gave the philosophers' sense, “moderation in actions or words”, “courtesy, decency in bearing” and “the particular way of doing something”.^[18] The grammatical sense “mood” and the musical “mode” are in the Academy's dictionary of 1817.^[19]

The plural modos still means manners (buenos modos, malos modos).^[5][20] Baralt in 1855 called de todos modos “anyway” a needless Gallicism, but it is general and is recorded as normal in Mexico and Argentina.^[21][22][23] In much of Latin America ni modo means “it can't be helped” or “no way”.^[24][1]

Timeline

• 1272 – first of the form modo in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[14]
• 1490 – the Breve diccionario's date of first record.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: manera, modo o forma.^[16]
• 1532 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City: al modo y manera.^[25]
• 1611 – Covarrubias glosses it “manner or form”.^[17]
• 1817 – the Academy adds the grammatical and musical senses.^[19]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. modus”.^[26]

Meanings

Noun

1. way, manner: the aspect an action or a being presents to an observer.^[5][1]
2. A procedure or set of procedures for doing something: No hubo modo de abrir la puerta.^[5]
3. moderation, restraint in actions or words.^[5][20]
4. (usually in the plural) manners, courtesy in bearing or dealings.^[5][20]
5. (law) A charge attached to a right, especially to a gift or inheritance.^[5]
6. (law) The material delivery that, with the title, is needed to transfer ownership and other real rights.^[5]
7. (philosophy) A variable but determinate form that a being can take without ceasing to be itself.^[5]
8. (physics) A particular form that a phenomenon can take.^[5]
9. (grammar) mood: the category of the verb expressed by inflection, showing the speaker's attitude or syntactic dependence.^[5][1]
10. (music) A mode, the arrangement of the intervals of a scale in tonal music.^[5]

Word family

• modismo
• modoso
• sobremodo

Related words

• moderno
• moda
• moderar
• modesto
• módico
• módulo
• molde
• modelo
• Latin modus

Usage notes

Common phrases include de modo que “so that”, de todos modos “anyway”, de ningún modo “by no means” and a modo de “by way of, as a kind of”.^[20][1] The DLE has modo adverbial as the traditional term for an adverbial phrase.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 302
3. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. modo
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. modo
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. modo
6. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. modo
7. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 5, 711
9. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. modo
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. modo
13. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. modo
14. ^ a b Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. modo
15. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. modo
16. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. modo
17. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1141
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 585
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 579
20. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. modo
21. ^ Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 445
22. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 731
23. ^ Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres, p. 315
24. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. modo
25. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. modo
26. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 710