Difference between In a fashion and In the fashion

in a fashion—

1. (also: after a fashion) to a certain extent but not very satisfactorily:

• I kept puffing at it [trombone] until I could play, in a fashion, the little Jim Robinson solo.

2. in the way specified:

• Nor did he fail to condemn wrong doing in a fashion which Scotch folk call teethy.

in the fashion— = in a fashion 2:

• Mrs. Rauscher mistook the meaning of the question and responded in the fashion she did to her own embarrassment.

Note: The expression does not correlate in meaning with the phrase in fashion—popular; fashionable:

• This writer was in fashion at the beginning of the century.