What does modernity mean?
Modernity names the state or quality of being modern: the use of current ideas, technologies, institutions, styles, or ways of life rather than those inherited from earlier periods. In academic and public writing it often appears in abstract contexts such as the impact, challenge, or promise of modernity. The word can carry a neutral sense of historical change as well as more critical connotations of disruption, alienation, or cultural conflict. It is especially common in sociology, philosophy, literary criticism, and art history. Modernity is usually treated as a mass noun, so the plural is uncommon. Although its core meaning is consistent across British and American English, speakers may frame it positively as progress or negatively as the erosion of tradition. The term is useful when discussing not simply whether something is new, but how modern ideas and systems shape social experience.
nounModernity is the quality or condition of being modern, especially of reflecting contemporary ideas, technologies, institutions, or ways of life. It may also refer collectively to the modern period.
- The quality or condition of being modern, particularly in relation to contemporary ideas, culture, technology, institutions, or social life.
- The modern period considered collectively as a historical or cultural condition.
"The rise of urban life has fundamentally shaped the experience of modernity."
"The exhibition examines how the internet has reshaped everyday modernity."
"The novel presents modernity as a source of both opportunity and dislocation."
Rare; normally used for distinct modern objects, works, features, or examples.
"The collection displays modernities from the twentieth century alongside older objects."
The word is only four centuries old, yet it grew from a simple label for what is current into a central concept in philosophy, sociology, and history.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does modernity come from?
Modernity was formed in English in the early 17th century by combining modern with the noun-forming suffix -ity. The related word modern entered English from French moderne, ultimately from Latin modernus, meaning “recent” or “just now,” a word associated with modus, meaning “measure” or “manner.” Its broader philosophical and historical senses developed later as writers used it to characterize the distinctive conditions of the present age.
How modernity is actually used
Chiefly formal and academic; it is often neutral in broad historical discussions but may be critical, especially when contrasted with tradition, community, or established social order. It is ordinarily treated as an uncountable mass noun, although a rare plural exists. British and American usage are essentially the same, apart from pronunciation.
Easily confused with modernity
Modernity is the broad condition or period of being modern, whereas modernism is the artistic movement characterized by experimentation and the rejection of traditional forms.