module

noun

Etymology: Borrowed from French module, from Latin modulus (“a small measure, a measure, mode, meter”), diminutive of modus (“measure”) (whence mode). Doublet of modulus and mold.

1. A self-contained component of a system, often interchangeable, which has a well-defined interface to the other components.

   “A friend who’s spent decades as an auto mechanic recently confided that he’s grateful to be nearing retirement. “These Teslas,” he told me, “they’re not even cars anymore – they’re computers on wheels. When something goes wrong, you don’t fix it; you just replace entire modules.” What was once a craft that any dedicated person could learn has become an exercise in supervised dependency.”

2. A standard unit of measure used for determining the proportions of a building.
3. A section of a program; a subroutine or group of subroutines.

   “Class modules are similar to form modules except they do not have a visible interface (GUI).”

   “When there is more than one protected module in memory, the rules for accessing the code and data sections of a given module treat all the other modules as if they were unprotected memory.”

4. A unit of education covering a single topic.

   “Which modules are you studying next year?”

5. A pre-prepared adventure scenario with related materials for a role-playing game.

   “Dragonborn […] first appeared in the Dragons of Despair module (1984) for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as “dragonmen.””

6. An abelian group equipped with the operation of multiplication by an element of a ring (or another of certain algebraic objects), representing a generalisation of the concept of vector space with scalar multiplication.

   “Modules over a ring are a generalization of abelian groups (which are modules over #92;textstyle#92;mathbb#123;Z#125;).”

   “Approximately forty-five years ago K. Morita presented the first major results on equivalences and dualities between categories of modules over a pair of rings.”

7. A fractal element.
8. A file containing a music sequence that can be played in a tracker.

   “I composed a number of techno and rave modules back in the 1990s.”

9. A contrivance for regulating the supply of water from an irrigation channel.
10. An independent self-contained unit of a spacecraft.