variance

American  

[vair-ee-uhns] / ˈvɛər i əns /

noun

1. the state, quality, or fact of being variable, divergent, different, or anomalous.

2. an instance of varying; difference; discrepancy.

3. Also called mean square deviation.  Statistics. the square of the standard deviation.

4. Physics, Chemistry. the number of degrees of freedom of a system.

5. Law.

   1. a difference or discrepancy, as between two statements or documents in law that should agree.

   2. a departure from the cause of action originally stated in the complaint.

6. an official permit to do something normally forbidden by regulations, especially by building in a way or for a purpose normally forbidden by a zoning law or a building code.

7. a disagreement, dispute, or quarrel.

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idioms

1. at variance,

   1. (of things) in a state of difference or disagreement.

   2. (of persons) in a state of controversy or dissension.

      at variance with one's superiors.

variance British  

/ ˈvɛərɪəns /

noun

1. the act of varying or the quality, state, or degree of being divergent; discrepancy

2. an instance of diverging; dissension

   our variance on this matter should not affect our friendship

3. 1. (often foll by with) (of facts, etc) not in accord; conflicting

   2. (of persons) in a state of dissension

4. statistics a measure of dispersion obtained by taking the mean of the squared deviations of the observed values from their mean in a frequency distribution

5. a difference or discrepancy between two steps in a legal proceeding, esp between a statement in a pleading and the evidence given to support it

6. (in the US and Canada) a licence or authority issued by the board of variance to contravene the usual rule, esp to build contrary to the provision of a zoning code

7. chem the number of degrees of freedom of a system, used in the phase rule

8. accounting the difference between actual and standard costs of production

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Other Word Forms

• nonvariance noun
• self-variance noun

Etymology

Origin of variance

First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English, from Latin variantia, from vari(āre) “to vary” ( vary ) + -antia -ance

Example Sentences

While polling heading into the primary showed a lot of variance, the average converged on Paxton leading the race by about 4 points.

From Slate • Mar. 4, 2026

Lieberman sees a significant variance in the quality of the management teams in the sector.

From Barron's • Feb. 27, 2026

Performance and reliability: Distributed GPU networks face inherent challenges with performance variance, latency and quality control.

From MarketWatch • Dec. 3, 2025

The hope was to become immune to the effect of injury, inconsistency and the natural variance of the postseason.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 22, 2025

The younger face was at variance with the music of its voice.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White

Related Words

• deviation
• difference of opinion
• discrepancy
• divergence
• fluctuation