variant
nounEtymology From Old French variant, from Latin variāns, the present active participle of variō (“to change”). First attested in c. 1380.
1
Something that is slightly different from a type or norm.
- All breeds of dog are variants of the species “Canis lupus familiaris”.
- Most train operators have reduced services with emergency timetables, as they struggle to cope with a rapid increase in staff absences due to the Omicron variant of COVID.2022 January 12, Paul Clifton, “Network News: Emergency timetables as absences surge due to COVID”, in RAIL, number 948, page 6:
3
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Programming, Sciences A variable that can hold any of various unrelated data types.
4
Human sciences, Lexicography, Linguistics, Sciences One of a set of words or other linguistic forms that conveys the same meaning or serves the same function.
- The word "kerosine" is a variant of “kerosene”.
- The "Terms" number is the total number of words and lexical phrases, including sub-headwords and other nested lexical items, but exclusive of variants.2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes, page 297:
1 more example
- Each member of this group of two or more forms is called a variant. [...] In this case ‘-in’ and ‘-ing’ are variants of the sociolinguistic variable -ing.2014, Kimberly Geeslin, Avizia Yim Long, Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition, page 27:
- Derived terms
44 terms
Alpha variant, Beta variant, biovariant, bivariant, copy-number variant, delta variant, Delta variant, epivariant, Epsilon variant, equivariant, Eta variant, Gamma variant, genovariant, glycovariant, heterovariant, immunovariant, invariant, Iota variant, isovariant, Kappa variant, Kraken variant, Lambda variant, metavariant, microvariant, monovariant, multivariant, Mu variant, neurovariant, nonvariant, Omega variant, Omicron variant, pathovariant, pharmacovariant, polyvariant, scariant, serovariant, splice variant, subvariant, Theta variant, univariant, unvariant, variant reading, Zeta variant, z-variant- Related terms
- variance, variation, vary, alternate, alternative