Definition of "modern"

But then I had the flintlock by me for protection. ¶ There were giants in the days when that gun was made; for surely no modern mortal could have held that mass of metal steady to his shoulder. The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window […].

1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […]

The "Overhead Door" is the garage door that can be opened or closed at a touch every day in the year—regardless of the weather. It is the garage door that opens UP Completely Out of the Way. In short, it is the modern door for the modern garage—in step with the times.

1930 May 31, “The "Overhead Door" for Garage-Factory-Warehouse”, in The Saturday Evening Post‎, volume 202, number 48, page 110

In fact, he had created the conditions for the great horror of modern times.

2018 June 14, Timothy Snyder, “How Did the Nazis Gain Power in Germany?”, in The New York Times

The solitary, lumbering trolls of Scandinavian mythology would sometimes be turned to stone by exposure to sunlight. Barack Obama is hoping that several measures announced on June 4th will have a similarly paralysing effect on their modern incarnation, the patent troll.

2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55

The only supernatural agents which can in any manner be allowed to us moderns, are ghosts; but of these I would advise an author to be extremely sparing.

1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […]

What the moderns could mean by their suppression of the final couplet's repeatings, cannot be conceiv'd […]

1779, Edward Capell, John Collins, Notes and various readings to Shakespeare

They at least had the immense and mighty imagination of which I speak; they could unthink the past. They could uncreate the Fall. With a reverence which moderns might think impudence, they could uncreate the Creation.

1930, G. K. Chesterton, The Resurrection of Rome

Even though we moderns can never crawl inside the skin of the ancient and think and feel as he did […] we must as historians make the attempt.

1956, John Albert Wilson, The Culture of Ancient Egypt, page 144

Yeats understood these ancient mysteries better than any modern.

1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 181