English
variety
Variety comes from Latin varietās ‘difference, diversity, variety’, and goes back to varius.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvarius1‘diverse’
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvarietās1‘difference’
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600varieté1
- Englishearliest quotation 1549variety1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English variety
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1549, Erasmus: “Nor is our body made of one parte onely,…”.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvariusWiktionary, English variety‘diverse’
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEvarietāsWiktionary, English variety‘difference’
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600varietéWiktionary, English variety
- Englishearliest quotation 1549varietyWiktionary, English variety. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1549, Erasmus: “Nor is our body made of one parte onely,…”
The story
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).
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with variety, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- ‘to be/become empty’
- want ← wanten ← vanta ← *wanatōną ← *wanô
- waste ← wast ← wast ← *wōstī ← *wōstaz
- vast ← vaste ← vastus ← *wāstos ← *(h₁)weh₂-stos
- vacation ← vacacioun ← vacacion ← vacātiō ← vacō
- void ← voide ← vuit ← *vocitum ← vacuus
- vacant ← vacāns
- vain ← veyn ← vānus ← *wānos
- evacuate ← ēvacuātus ← ēvacuō ← vacuō ← vacuus
- vanity ← vanite ← vanité ← vānitas ← vānus
- vanish ← evanisshen ← esvanir ← *exvanire ← ēvānēscō
- waning ← waninge ← waniende ← *wanōndz ← *wanōną
- vacate ← vacat ← vacat ← vacat ← vacō
44 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
noun A deviation or difference.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “variety”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Latin varius / variety