modifier

[mod-uh-fahy-er] /ˈmɒd əˌfaɪ ər/
noun
1.
a person or thing that modifies.
2.
Grammar.
  1. a word, phrase, or sentence element that limits or qualifies the sense of another word, phrase, or element in the same construction.
  2. the immediate constituent of an endocentric construction that is not the head.
Origin
1575-85; modify + -er1
Usage note
See dangling participle, misplaced modifier.
Examples from the web for modifiers
  • Cars allowed to race on the track include open wheel modifiers, road hogs and late models.
  • But today ever more it is recognized that all those millions of bugs living in each of us are important modifiers of our health.
  • Gravity, relative speed are known modifiers in our local reality.
  • They can be used for a drug delivery system, biosensors or viscosity modifiers.
  • There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs.
  • Digital gods are distributed deities, verbs and modifiers rather than nouns.
  • Somewhat, but those are mostly modifiers to research-related metrics.
  • But there was a price: all those misplaced modifiers made book reports and research papers harder to understand.
  • The following charts list procedure codes with their corresponding required or allowable modifiers.
British Dictionary definitions for modifiers

modifier

/ˈmɒdɪˌfaɪə/
noun
1.
(grammar) Also called qualifier. a word or phrase that qualifies the sense of another word; for example, the noun alarm is a modifier of clock in alarm clock and the phrase every day is an adverbial modifier of walks in he walks every day
2.
a person or thing that modifies
Word Origin and History for modifiers

modifier

n.

1580s, agent noun of modify. Grammatical sense is from 1865.

modifiers in Culture

modifier definition


A word or group of words that describes or limits a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. Modifiers applied to nouns are adjectives. Modifiers applied to verbs or adjectives are adverbs. Those that are applied to adverbs themselves are also called adverbs.