noun A difference from what is usual or expected.
- Add some variety to your week by trying a different route to work.
- Eating the same lunch every day lacks variety, so I swap things around.
- Children need variety in their activities, or they quickly get bored.
noun One particular kind or version of something.
- This variety of cheese is made only in the mountains.
- Which variety of coffee do you prefer, strong or mild?
- There are several varieties of pasta in the kitchen cupboard.
noun A type of animal or plant with features that make it different from others of the same species.
- This variety of apple stays crisp for months in a cool cellar.
- The gardener grows a red variety of tomato that resists disease.
- Farmers have bred a hardy variety of sheep for cold hillsides.
- Jim is a nurseryman, specialising in clematis, and he has built up a business exporting 150 varieties to countries all over the world.
— Robert Dougall, AA Book of British Villages (1980)
- The gardener found a rare variety growing on the hillside, unlike any other in the region.
noun In biology, a classification level below species and subspecies, or an organism at that level.
- Botanists described the plant as a variety of the common wild rose.
- This variety differs from the main species only in its white flowers.
