modality

plural modalities

1. countableuncountableThe fact of being modal.
2. countableuncountablehuman sciencesThe classification of propositions on the basis on whether they claim possibility, impossibility, contingency or necessity; mode.
3. countableuncountablegrammarThe inflection of a verb that shows how its action is conceived by the speaker.

   Synonyms: mood

4. countableuncountablemedicineA method of diagnosis or therapy.

   Exercise training is a therapeutic modality that should be considered for all patients with ventricular dysfunction

   2010, Ellen Hillegass, H. Steven Sadowsky, Essentials of Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy

   3 more examples

   If a port-wine stain has been treated with another modality, such as the argon, CO2, or KTP laser, electrocautery, radiation, or tattooing, FPDL treatment may provide less lightening and improvement.

   2001, Gregory Keller, Victor Lacombe, Lasers in Aesthetic Surgery, page 188

   The four major modalities used in patients with solid tumors are (a) surgery, (b) radiation therapy, (c) chemotherapy, and (d) immunotherapy

   2006, Richard A. Helms, David J. Quan, Textbook of Therapeutics: Drug and Disease Management, page 2487

   In general, pharmacotherapy is less effective as a single modality approach than psychotherapy when treating chronic depression with an Axis II disorder.

   2011, George M. Kapalka, Pediatricians and Pharmacologically Trained Psychologists, page 7

5. countableuncountableAny of the senses (such as sight or taste)
6. countableuncountablehuman sciencesA particular way in which the information is to be encoded for presentation to humans, i.e. to the type of sign and to the status of reality ascribed to or claimed by a sign, text or genre.
7. countableuncountablelifestyleThe organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations.
8. countableuncountableentertainmentThe subject concerning certain diatonic scales known as musical modes.
9. countableuncountablehuman sciencesThe way in which infrastructure and knowledge of how to use it give rise to a meaningful pattern of interaction (a concept in Anthony Giddens's structuration theory).

   Modalities of structuration, then, are simply ways in which rules and resources are knowingly used by people in interactions.

   2010, Kenneth Allan, Contemporary Social and Sociological Theory: Visualizing Social Worlds, →ISBN, page 255

   3 more examples

   Thus, the University budgeting system can be seen not only as modality in the reproduction of social structures, but also as an important means of meeting deeply rooted psychological needs for ontological security.

   1997, Christopher G. A. Bryant, David Jary, Anthony Giddens: Critical Assessments - Volume 4, →ISBN, page 307

   In turn, social structure and human interactions are interrelated through three aspects of modality: interpretive schema, facility, and norm.

   2016, Jia Luo, Social Structuration in Tibetan Society, →ISBN

   An example, which I explore in detail in this book in Chap. 5, is the way that parents to be use their knowledge and expertise of how to mobilise digital memories (their affordances to use a mobile phone, to use social media platforms for example) to take sonographic image of the unborn foetus that they are given in a hospital out into the world and beyond. They thereby shift the modality of the medical procedure that generated the image-memory as part of an obstetric sonogram.

   2016, Anna Reading, Gender and Memory in the Globital Age, →ISBN, page 52

10. countableuncountablelawThe quality of being limited by a condition.
11. countableuncountableastrologyThat whether a zodiac sign is cardinal, fixed or mutable