modern

comparative moderner · comparative more modern · superlative modernest · superlative most modern · superlative modernmost

1. Pertaining to a current or recent time and style; not ancient.

   Our online interactive game is a modern approach to teaching about gum disease.  Although it was built in the 1600s, the building still has a very modern look.

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   But then I had the flintlock by me for protection. ¶ There were giants in the days when that gun was made; for surely no modern mortal could have held that mass of metal steady to his shoulder. The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window[…].

   1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC

   The "Overhead Door" is the garage door that can be opened or closed at a touch every day in the year—regardless of the weather. It is the garage door that opens UP Completely Out of the Way. In short, it is the modern door for the modern garage—in step with the times.

   1930 May 31, “The "Overhead Door" for Garage-Factory-Warehouse”, in The Saturday Evening Post, volume 202, number 48, page 110

   Among the most modern of all the Pacific stock in Great Britain is the stud of "Merchant Navy" and "West Country" Pacifics on the Southern Region, and the rebuilding which is now being carried out, preserving all the best features of the Bulleid designs—such as the free-steaming boiler—and jettisoning the features that have given trouble, in particular the chain-driven valve-motion, should give the Southern a supply of highly-competent machines able to last out the remaining life of steam on the S.R.

   1957 July 28, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 496

   In fact, he had created the conditions for the great horror of modern times.

   2018 June 14, Timothy Snyder, “How Did the Nazis Gain Power in Germany?”, in The New York Times

   The solitary, lumbering trolls of Scandinavian mythology would sometimes be turned to stone by exposure to sunlight. Barack Obama is hoping that several measures announced on June 4th will have a similarly paralysing effect on their modern incarnation, the patent troll.

   2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55

   Synonyms: contemporary

2. historyPertaining to the modern period (c.1800 to contemporary times), particularly in academic historiography.

plural moderns

1. Someone who lives in modern times.

   Yeats understood these ancient mysteries better than any modern.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 181

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   The only supernatural agents which can in any manner be allowed to us moderns, are ghosts; but of these I would advise an author to be extremely sparing.

   1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC

   What the moderns could mean by their suppression of the final couplet's repeatings, cannot be conceiv'd […]

   1779, Edward Capell, John Collins, Notes and various readings to Shakespeare

   They at least had the immense and mighty imagination of which I speak; they could unthink the past. They could uncreate the Fall. With a reverence which moderns might think impudence, they could uncreate the Creation.

   1930, G. K. Chesterton, The Resurrection of Rome

   Even though we moderns can never crawl inside the skin of the ancient and think and feel as he did […] we must as historians make the attempt.

   1956, John Albert Wilson, The Culture of Ancient Egypt, page 144