Definition of "modernity"

While the rolling-stock lacks modernity, the line equipment, with its single catenary suspension, has a surprisingly up-to-date appearance.

1944 November and December, “Notes and News: Lancaster-Heysham Electrification, L.M.S.”, in Railway Magazine, page 372

There were also particles no one had predicted that just appeared. Five of them […, i]n order of increasing modernity, […] are the neutrino, the pi meson, the antiproton, the quark and the Higgs boson.

2012 March-April, Jeremy Bernstein, “A Palette of Particles”, in American Scientist‎, volume 100, number 2, page 146