various
va·rious
adjective
1.
of many different kinds purposefully arranged but lacking any uniformity
- “assorted sizes”
- “his disguises are many and various”
- “various experiments have failed to disprove the theory”
- “cited various reasons for his behavior”
2.
- “the respective club members”
- “specialists in their several fields”
- “the various reports all agreed”
3.
distinctly dissimilar or unlike
- “diverse parts of the country”
- “celebrities as diverse as Bob Hope and Bob Dylan”
- “animals as various as the jaguar and the cavy and the sloth”
Origin
Borrowed from Middle French varieux, from Latin varius (“manifold, diverse, various, parti-colored, variegated, also changing, changeable, fickle, etc.”). By surface analysis, vary + -ous.
Phrases
- many and various
- various and sundry
- various reading
Related words
Word family
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.