Mode, n.
Etymology: [L. modus a measure, due or proper measure, bound, manner, form; akin to E. mete: cf. F. mode. See Mete, and cf. Commodious, Mood in grammar, Modus.]
1. Manner of doing or being; method; form; fashion; custom; way; style; as, the mode of speaking; the mode of dressing. The duty of itself being resolved on, the mode of doing it may easily be found. Jer. Taylor. A table richly spread in regal mode. Milton.
2. Prevailing popular custom; fashion, especially in the phrase the mode. The easy, apathetic graces of a man of the mode. Macaulay.
3. Variety; gradation; degree. Pope.
4. (Metaph.)
10 more senses
Any combination of qualities or relations, considered apart from the substance to which they belong, and treated as entities; more generally, condition, or state of being; manner or form of arrangement or manifestation; form, as opposed to matter. Modes I call such complex ideas, which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependencies on, or affections of, substances. Locke.
5. (Logic)
The form in which the proposition connects the predicate and subject, whether by simple, contingent, or necessary assertion; the form of the syllogism, as determined by the quantity and quality of the constituent proposition; mood.
6. (Gram.)
Same as Mood.
7. (Mus.)
The scale as affected by the various positions in it of the minor intervals; as, the Dorian mode, the Ionic mode, etc., of ancient Greek music.
Note: In modern music, only the major and the minor mode, of whatever key, are recognized.
8. A kind of silk. See Alamode, n.
Syn. -- Method; manner. See Method.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for mode; he lists it under system.
He lists it without comment; the entries above explain its neighbors.