Two more Spanish words that shouldn’t be confused despite their initial similarity are moda (feminine) and modo (masculine).
Let’s start with the more glamorous moda (feminine), whose pronunciation you can listen to here:
Why ‘more glamorous’? Because la moda is fashion.This might be the styles of clothing that come and go from year to year, or else an activity or way of behaving that is popular at a particular time.
la moda femenina
women’s fashion
Se pasan de moda.
They’re going out of fashion.
Volvió a ponerse de moda.
It came back into fashion or It became fashionable again.
Está de moda ser delgado.
It’s fashionable to be slim.
Turning to the descriptively useful modo, you can listen to how it’s pronounced here:
Someone’s modo of doing something is their way or manner of doing it:
Explicó su modo de trabajar.
He explained his way or manner of working.
Es un modo de vida.
It’s a way of life.
La industria impuso cambios en el modo de trabajar, vivir y ver el mundo.
Industry brought changes to our way of working, living and seeing the world.
Es el modo correcto de hacerlo.
It’s the right way to do it.
a mi modo de ver
to my way of thinking
So why ‘descriptively useful’? Because modo (like manera and forma) can be used in combination with de and an adjective to describe the manner in which something is done or happens. Such combinations are often the equivalent of English adverbs ending in -ly:
Las autoridades deben poner en libertad de modo inmediato a los hombres detenidos.
The authorities must free the detained men immediately.
Nunca han sido investigados de un modo sistemático.
They have never been investigated in a systematic way or systematically.
If you’re already separating your subjunctive mood from your indicative one, you’ll want to know that un modo is also a mood of the grammatical kind:
‘Hubieron’ corresponde a la tercera persona del plural del verbo ‘haber’ del pretérito indefinido del modo indicativo.
‘Hubieron’ is the third person plural of the verb ‘haber’ in the preterite (indicative mood).
Tengo que explicar el uso del modo subjuntivo.
I have to explain the use of the subjunctive mood.
Un modo can also be a mode, one of a number of options that can be selected according to requirements:
Existen varios modos de operación.
There are several modes of operation.
Modo is used in various useful expressions in Spanish, such as:
de cualquier modo:
De cualquier modo, se puede afirmar que no son abundantes.
Anyway or In any case, we can say there aren’t many of them.
Quería seguir esa carrera de cualquier modo.
She wanted to follow this race anyhow.
de todos modos:
De todos modos, el público está contento.
Anyway, the public’s happy.
de modo que:
Cuando regresamos encontramos la cena servida, de modo que nos quedamos a cenar.
When we got back we found supper was served. So we stayed to dinner.
Hay que contemplarlos desde corta distancia de modo que pueda percibirse su diseño macizo.
You need to look at them from a short distance away so that their solid design can be appreciated.
For more expressions involving modo, please see the dictionary entry.
In the plural, modos can be manners ‒ the expressions and behaviour shown by a person towards others:
Ha sido ejemplo de disciplina y buenos modos.
He was an example of discipline and good manners.
To learn the ways of more similar-looking Spanish nouns with different meanings, come back next week.
