modification

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act or process of modifying or the condition of being modified.
• noun A change or a result produced by modifying.
• noun A change undergone by a word that is borrowed from another language.
• noun A phonological change undergone by a word or morpheme when it is used in a construction, as the change of will to 'll in they'll.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In biology, a change which is brought about in a living being by its own activity and is not transmitted to descendants, as contrasted with a variation regarded as a congenital change which is not the effect of the activity of the organism and is transmitted to descendants; an acquired character.
• noun Determination by a mode or quality; qualification.
• noun The act or process of modifying or altering in character, form, or function; the act or process of producing variation.
• noun Alteration or change: often specifically in the sense of abatement or reduction.
• noun The result of variation or alteration; that which marks or shows variation of character, form, or function; mode, form, or condition reached through process of change, or through being modified.
• noun In Scots law, the determining of the amount of the stipend of the minister of a parish. This is fixed by a decision of the Court of Teinds, called a decree of modification.
• noun In music, same as temperament.
• noun Synonyms Change, alteration, variation, qualification.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of modifying, or the state of being modified; a change
• noun Something which has been modified; a modified form or condition; state as modified.
• noun (Gram.) The alteration of the meaning of a word or phrase by another word or phrase; -- usually a restriction of the scope of the word modified.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun the act or result of modifying or the condition of being modified
• noun an alteration or adjustment to something
• noun a change to an organism as a result of its environment that is not transmissable to offspring
• noun linguistics a change to a word when it is borrowed by another language
• noun linguistics the change undergone by a word when used in a construction (for instance am => 'm in I'm)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun slightly modified copy; not an exact copy
• noun the grammatical relation that exists when a word qualifies the meaning of the phrase
• noun the act of making something different (as e.g. the size of a garment)
• noun an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another