variety
Meanings
- A deviation or difference.
- A specific variation of something.
- An animal or plant (or a group of such animals or plants) with characteristics causing it to differ from other animals or plants of the same species; a strain or cultivar.
- A rank in a taxonomic classification below species and (if present) subspecies, and above form; hence, an organism of that rank.
- A specific form of a language, neutral to whether that form is an accent, dialect, register, etc., and to its prestige level.
- A stamp, or set of stamps, which has one or more characteristics (such as colour, paper, etc.) differing from other stamps in the same issue, especially if such differences are intentionally introduced.
- A collection or number of different things.
- In universal algebra: an equational class; the class of all algebraic structures of a given signature, satisfying a given set of identities.
- Ellipsis of algebraic variety (“the set of solutions of a given system of polynomial equations over the real or complex numbers; any of certain generalisations of such a set that preserves the geometric intuition implicit in the original definition”).
- The total number of distinct states of a system; also, the logarithm to the base 2 of the total number of distinct states of a system.
- Ellipsis of variety performance or variety show (“a type of entertainment featuring a succession of short, unrelated performances by various artistes such as (depending on the medium) acrobats, comedians, dancers, magicians, singers, etc.”).
- The quality of being varied; diversity.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle French varieté (“variety”) (modern French variété (“variety; genre, type”)) or directly from its etymon Latin varietās (“difference; diversity, variety”) + English -ty (suffix forming abstract nouns from adjectives); by surface analysis, various + -ety. Varietās is derived from varius (“different, diverse, various; variegated”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“to abandon; to give out; to leave”)) + -tās (suffix forming feminine abstract nouns indicating a state of being). The English word displaced the native Old English mislīcnes. Sense 1.3.2 (“total number of distinct states of a system; logarithm to the base 2 of the total number of distinct states of a system”) was coined by the English psychiatrist William Ross Ashby (1903–1972) in his work An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956). Cognates * Galician variedade (“variety”) * Italian varietà (“difference; variety”) * Portuguese variedade (“variety”) * Spanish variedad (“breed; variety”)