1. To form, as sound, to a certain key, or to a certain portion.
2. To vary or inflect in a natural, customary, or musical manner; as, the organs of speech modulate the
voice in reading or speaking.
Could any person so modulate her voice as to deceive so many?
Broome. Modulate
(Mod"u*late), v. i. (Mus.) To pass from one key into another.
Modulation
(Mod`u*la"tion) n. [L. modulatio: cf. F. modulation.]
1. The act of modulating, or the state of being modulated; as, the modulation of the voice.
2. Sound modulated; melody. [R.] Thomson.
3. (Mus.) A change of key, whether transient, or until the music becomes established in the new key; a
shifting of the tonality of a piece, so that the harmonies all center upon a new keynote or tonic; the art of
transition out of the original key into one nearly related, and so on, it may be, by successive changes,
into a key quite remote. There are also sudden and unprepared modulations.
Modulator
(Mod"u*la`tor) n. [L.] One who, or that which, modulates. Denham.
Module
(Mod"ule) n. [F., fr. L. modulus a small measure, dim. of modus. See Mode, and cf. Model,
Modulus, Mold a matrix.]
1. A model or measure.
2. (Arch.) The size of some one part, as the diameter of semi-diameter of the base of a shaft, taken
as a unit of measure by which the proportions of the other parts of the composition are regulated. Generally,
for columns, the semi-diameter is taken, and divided into a certain number of parts, called minutes
though often the diameter is taken, and any dimension is said to be so many modules and minutes
in height, breadth, or projection.
Module
(Mod"ule), v. t. [See module, n., Modulate.] To model; also, to modulate. [Obs.] Sandys.
Drayton.
Modulus
(||Mod"u*lus) n.; pl. Moduli [L., a small measure. See Module, n.] (Math., Mech., & Physics)
A quantity or coefficient, or constant, which expresses the measure of some specified force, property, or
quality, as of elasticity, strength, efficiency, etc.; a parameter.
Modulus of a machine, a formula expressing the work which a given machine can perform under the
conditions involved in its construction; the relation between the work done upon a machine by the moving
power, and that yielded at the working points, either constantly, if its motion be uniform, or in the interval
of time which it occupies in passing from any given velocity to the same velocity again, if its motion be
variable; — called also the efficiency of the machine. Mosley. Rankine. — Modulus of a system
of logarithms (Math.), a number by which all the Napierian logarithms must be multiplied to obtain
the logarithms in another system. — Modulus of elasticity. (a) The measure of the elastic force of
any substance, expressed by the ratio of a stress on a given unit of the substance to the accompanying
distortion, or strain. (b) An expression of the force (usually in terms of the height in feet or weight in
pounds of a column of the same body) which would be necessary to elongate a prismatic body of a
transverse section equal to a given unit, as a square inch or foot, to double, or to compress it to half, its
original length, were that degree of elongation or compression possible, or within the limits of elasticity; —
called also Young's modulus. — Modulus of rupture, the measure of the force necessary to break a
given substance across, as a beam, expressed by eighteen times the load which is required to break a
bar of one inch square, supported flatwise at two points one foot apart, and loaded in the middle between
the points of support. Rankine.
