Mod

How to spell mod

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mod

What does mod mean?

1. nounA user-made alteration to a video game, vehicle, or piece of software that changes how it looks or works.
2. nounA member of a British youth subculture of the 1960s known for stylish tailored clothing and motor scooters.

Mod in a sentence

• A fan-made mod added new maps to the racing game.

• Every mod in the photograph wore a tailored suit and rode a chrome scooter.

• Installing the wrong mod can crash the whole program.

• The museum exhibit traced how the typical mod dressed and danced.

Where does mod come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Mod is a clipping, a word shortened from a longer one, and it descends ultimately from the Latin root modus, which literally meant 'a measure, a manner, or a way of doing something'. From that root Latin built modernus, 'belonging to the present time', and modificare, 'to set a limit to' or 'to adjust'. The youth-culture sense, written with a capital M as Mod, was clipped in 1950s and 1960s Britain from the word 'modern', specifically the term 'modernist' jazz fan, and it came to describe sharply dressed young people on scooters who favoured modern styling. The technology and gaming sense was clipped separately and more recently from 'modification', meaning a user-made change to a game, vehicle, or piece of software. Because both senses lead back through Latin to the idea of measure and manner, the same mod- fragment also turns up in everyday words such as mode, model, and moderate.

How the word is built

• Clipped form of modification or modern; both trace to the Latin root mod- (measure, manner, fit), seen also in mode, model, and moderate