variant
Americanadjective
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tending to change or alter; exhibiting variety or diversity; varying.
variant shades of color.
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not agreeing or conforming; differing, especially from something of the same general kind.
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not definitive, as a version of part of a text; different; alternative.
a variant reading.
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not universally accepted.
noun
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a person or thing that varies.
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a different spelling, pronunciation, or form of the same word.
“Vehemency” is a variant of “vehemence.”
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Microbiology, Pathology. a form of a virus, bacterium, or other microorganism that arises from a strain of the microorganism when a mutation changes a small part of the strain’s genetic code.
adjective
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liable to or displaying variation
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differing from a standard or type
a variant spelling
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obsolete not constant; fickle
noun
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something that differs from a standard or type
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statistics another word for variate
Other Word Forms
- nonvariant adjective
- unvariant adjective
Etymology
Origin of variant
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English variaunt(e), variant(e) “undergoing change, tending to change, changeable,” from Old French, from Latin variant-, stem of variāns, present participle of variāre “to mark or adorn with different colors”; various; -ant
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
More recently, researchers have included women as young as 30 in an effort to identify those who may face an increased risk of aggressive early cancers due to inherited genetic variants.
From Science Daily
Previous evidence suggests that most known AD risk variants tend to be population-specific or occur at different frequencies across groups.
From Science Daily
The contagious respiratory illness typically kills thousands of people in the U.S. each year, though that number can rise significantly in years with troublesome viral variants.
At one point this month, variants from just four U.S. companies—Google, xAI, Anthropic and OpenAI—swept the top 20 spots.
Die-hard K-pop fans will often purchase multiple “variants” of a release, each with different artwork or bonus songs.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
