Meanings
plural modal particles
- human sciencesA word class that indicates the mood of an utterance.
The modal particle da in Norwegian conditional clauses is a lexical item that is specialized for use in conditionals but it occurs in positive as well as in negative conditional clauses.
2005, Thorstein Fretheim, “Is there a rigid boundary between semantics and pragmatics?”, in Working Papers ISK, number 2/2005, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, via National Library of Norway, →ISSN, page 1161 more example
As far as we have been able to discover, no particles indicating the tense are ever used in conjunction with this or any of the other modal particles (except -il) , so that the time of the action must be gathered from the context.
1843, Heinrich August Eduard Meyer, Vocabulary of the Language Spoken by the Aborigines of the Southern and Eastern Portions of the Settled Districts of South Australia
Origin
- GermanModalpartikel
- Englishmodal particle
From modal + particle, attested from the first half of the 19th century. Calque of German Modalpartikel.
More words from German
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Chinese Mandarin 語氣助詞 /语气助词, 語氣詞 /语气词
- 語氣助詞 /语气助词 (yǔqìzhùcí)linguistic class
- 語氣詞 /语气词 (yǔqìcí)linguistic class
French particule modale
- particule modalelinguistic class
German Modalpartikel, Abtönungspartikel
- Modalpartikellinguistic class
- Abtönungspartikellinguistic class
Japanese 心態詞
- 心態詞 (shintaishi)linguistic class
Korean 양상소사
- 양상소사 (yangsangsosa)linguistic class
Swedish modalpartikel
- modalpartikellinguistic class
Vietnamese từ ngữ khí, ngữ khí từ
- từ ngữ khílinguistic class
- ngữ khí từlinguistic class
Cite this entry
modal particle. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/modal%20particle
“modal particle.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/modal%20particle. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “modal particle,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/modal%20particle.
Source: modal particle on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.