variety definition

English

Alternative forms

• variëty (rare)

Etymology

From Middle French varieté, from Latin varietās (“difference, diversity”), from varius (“different, various”); see various. Displaced native Old English mislīcnes.

Pronunciation

• enPR: və-rīʹĭ-tē, IPA^(key): /vəˈɹaɪ.ɪ.ti/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪɪti
• Hyphenation: va‧ri‧e‧ty

Noun

variety (countable and uncountable, plural varieties)

1. The quality of being varied; diversity.
   • 1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 34:

     The teeth of sharks, for all their variety, share one characteristic, and that is the way in which they are attached.

   Variety is the spice of life.

   Antonym: sameness

2. A specific variation of something.
3. A number of different things.
   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 4, in The Celebrity:

     One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.

   • 2013 January 1, Katie L. Burke, “Ecological Dependency”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, page 64:

     In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.” His quest leads him around the world to study a variety of suspect zoonoses—animal-hosted pathogens that infect humans.

   Synonyms: array, assortment

4. A state of constant change.
5. (taxonomy) A rank in a taxonomic classification, below species (infraspecific), either below subspecies (subspecific) or ranked comparably therewith.
6. (cybernetics) The total number of distinct states of a system.
7. (cybernetics) Logarithm of the base 2 of the total number of distinct states of a system.
8. (linguistics) A term used for a specific form of a language, neutral to whether that form is a dialect, accent, register, etc. and to its prestige level.
   • 2014, James Lambert, “Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis”, in World Englishes, page 114:

     The mere existence of a dictionary of a certain variety of English does not automatically confer acceptance of that variety.

9. (algebra, universal algebra) An equational class; the class of all algebraic structures of a given signature, satisfying a given set of identities.
10. (algebraic geometry) An algebraic variety.
11. The kind of theatrical entertainment given in variety shows.
12. The production of, or performance in, variety shows.

Synonyms

• (quality of being varied): See also Thesaurus:nonuniformity
• (algebraic geometry): algebraic variety
• (universal algebra): equational class, equational variety, variety of algebras

Hyponyms

• (specific variation of something): cultivar

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

• species
• (cybernetics: logarithm): information entropy

Further reading

• variety in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• variety in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.