modifier
/ˈmɒdɪfʌɪə
/noun
1A person or thing that makes partial or minor changes to something: mood modifiers like Valium and Lithium...
- ‘Chocolate is a potent mood modifier,’ says the author.
- OK, so there's no way a sea breeze is a classic cocktail, but since it conforms to the classic rule - a single spirit base and two modifiers - we'll allow it.
- Some eastern Albertan farmers hold weather modifiers responsible for further disrupting the natural water cycles and dehydrating their already parched land.
1.1 Grammar A word, especially an adjective or noun used attributively, that restricts or adds to the sense of a head noun (e.g. good and family in a good family house).This is possible because moving can function as an attributive modifier of the head noun pianos....
- Proper nouns can: when we talk about London fog, we are using London (a proper noun) as an attributive modifier of the noun fog.
- Although the modifier in a noun phrase will often be an adjective, it doesn't have to be.
1.2 Genetics A gene which modifies the phenotypic expression of a gene at another locus.This was explained by the action of rare alleles of autosomal modifiers that can influence or override the sex chromosome genes....
- These results demonstrate the existence of a class of modifiers of gene expression whose effects are associated with transient changes in DNA methylation of specific loci.
- The change in allele frequency at the modifier locus during diploid selection is given by Recombination.