I was discussing with Chris Luhrs the linguistic oddity that in the phrase "consider the integers mod two" the word mod is an abbreviation for modulo, while in the phrase "take the integers and mod out by two" the word mod cannot be replaced by modulo. In describing this I attempted to come up with the name for the part of speach which "modulo" is in the first example. After miserably failing (which is not that unusual considering that I have never taken grammer in English), Chris pointed out that it was not because I was being dumb but because, "modulo is the only surviving example I can find of the ablative in English." That is to say "modulo two" means "in the modulus two" thus making "modulo" a declined noun and a whole prepositional phrase in one word.

So I was curious whether any of you knew of any other examples of declined nouns in English similar to this situation.

Incidentally "modulo such and such" means "up to differing by such and such." In math terms the integers modulo two are where you consider two things equal if they differ by a multiple of two. However, I am fond of using the word in non-math situations. This is something that most math people do, because it's such a useful word. For example, one could say "modulo injuries the Lakers will win the NBA finals next year" (one could say that, but one would be wrong because of the Kings). Similarly one could say "modulo that bad haircut she's pretty cute," etc.