variety
Pluralvarieties
- 1A number or collection of different things, especially ones that are not all the same.
The museum displays a variety of artifacts from across the ancient world.
Volunteers tackled a variety of tasks, from cooking to repairs.
UsageUsually a variety of + plural noun (a wide variety of foods); the verb after it is often plural: a variety of options are open.
Similarassortment, array, spread
Note
It sits close to assortment, array and spread, but it stresses that the things are unlike one another. In the American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897), the narrator turns down "a variety of amusements", a phrasing that would pass unnoticed today.
- 2The quality of being made up of many different kinds; diversity.
The festival's strength lies in the sheer variety of its performers.
Critics praised the album for its variety, ranging from ballads to dance tracks.
UsageCommon phrases: add variety to something, for variety, and the saying variety is the spice of life.
Similardiversity, heterogeneity, multiformity
Oppositesameness, uniformity, consistency
Note
The saying that variety is the spice of life comes from William Cowper's poem The Task (1785), but poets praised variety long before. Shakespeare's Cleopatra has an "infinite variety" that age cannot wither, and Samuel Butler's Nature "affects so much to use variety." Here the word names a quality to be admired, the opposite of sameness, rather than a collection of different things.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- The saying “variety is the spice of life” originated with William Cowper. cowperandnewtonmuseum.org.uk
- Cowper's The Task contains the line underlying the saying. gutenberg.org
- William Cowper's poem The Task was first published in 1785. en.wikipedia.org
- Poets praised variety before Cowper's poem; Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra provides an earlier example. en.wikipedia.org
- Enobarbus describes Cleopatra's “infinite variety” in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra; Cleopatra does not speak the quotation. shakespeare.mit.edu
- Samuel Butler's The Elephant in the Moon contains the quoted wording, with “she” referring to Nature. en.wikisource.org
- 3A particular form or version of something that differs from others of its kind.
Texas hold'em is the most popular variety of poker in the United States.
The company also sells the soup in a low-sodium variety for customers who are watching their salt.
UsageHere a variety of names one type (a variety of coffee); with a plural noun it usually means many different things.
- 4In biology, a group of plants or animals within one species that differs from the rest in small inherited ways; in botany, the formal rank below species (or subspecies).
Botanists described a drought-resistant variety of maize.
The orchard grows several varieties of heritage apple.
Note
Charles Darwin, in On the Origin of Species (1859), writes of a "variety or sub-variety" of cultivated plants and animals, and a nurseryman can export 150 varieties of clematis.
- 5Entertainment made up of a series of short, different acts such as songs, comedy, and dances, or a show of this kind.
British television kept variety alive long after its music-hall roots faded.
She performed in variety throughout the 1950s, sharing bills with acrobats and magicians.
UsageFor the genre, usually no article (work in variety); one show is a variety show.
- 6A specific form of a language: whether an accent, dialect, or register, and regardless of its prestige; an isolect or lect.
Linguists study how each variety of a language changes over time.
Caribbean varieties of English have distinct grammar and vocabulary.
Similarlect
Note
Linguists reach for this word because it takes no side. Accent, dialect and register each say what kind of difference is involved, and some of these labels can carry a judgment of prestige. Variety makes neither claim, which is why it serves as a cover term beside the technical lect and isolect. James Lambert, writing on Indian English in 2014, can speak of "a certain variety of English" without ranking it.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- James Lambert published work on Indian English in 2014. scholars.cityu.edu.hk
- Lambert uses the exact phrase "a certain variety of English" without assigning that variety a prestige ranking. researchgate.net
Less common meanings
- 7Difference or departure from a standard or from something else, rather than a mix of many kinds; variation or deviation.
On closer study, the biologists found less variety between the two populations than they had expected.
The samples showed almost no variety from one batch to the next.
Similarvariation, difference, divergence, deviation, disparity
Oppositesimilarity
Note
Oliver Goldsmith, writing on tortoises in An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature (1774), finds "less variety" between the land and sea kinds than between birds that live on land and birds that swim. The word here measures how far things differ, not how many kinds there are.
- 8Short for algebraic variety.
- 9A stamp, or set of stamps, with one or more features (color, paper, a plate flaw, and so on) that differ from others in the same issue.
- 10In cybernetics, the total number of distinct states a system can take; also, the base-2 logarithm of that number.
- 11In universal algebra, the class of every algebraic structure with a given signature that satisfies a specified set of identities; an equational class.
Practice
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Origin
The word came from Middle French varieté or directly from its Latin source varietās ('difference, diversity, variety'), formed with the English suffix -ty; by surface analysis it is various + -ety. Varietās comes from varius ('different, diverse, various'), possibly going all the way back to Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- ('to abandon; to leave'). It replaced the native Old English word mislīcnes.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 9 facts
- English variety came from Middle French varieté or directly from Latin varietās. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin varietās means difference, diversity or variety. en.wiktionary.org
- The English formation includes the suffix -ty. en.wiktionary.org
- Variety can be analysed superficially as various + -ety. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin varietās derives from varius. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin varius means different, diverse or various. en.wiktionary.org
- A possible ultimate derivation from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- has been proposed. en.wiktionary.org
- The proposed Proto-Indo-European root is glossed as to abandon or to leave. en.wiktionary.org
- Variety displaced the native Old English word mislīcnes. en.wiktionary.org