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
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”; cf. various; see -ant
Explanation
A variant is another version of something. You could say chimps and apes and gorillas are variants in the primate family. Words often have variants, spellings that vary from region to region or country to country. The British colour and the American color are variants. When a movie or TV show is remade or casts a new actor — like with the string of James Bonds — you could call those movies variants. Where there are variants, there is variety — things aren't all the same.
Vocabulary lists containing variant
Stargirl
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This Week In Culture, April 26–May 2, 2020
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for November 27–December 3, 2021
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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.
"How could this have gone for four to six weeks, ... spreading while not getting the testing results that we needed to show that it was a particular variant?"
From Barron's • May 20, 2026
An individual with a variant on both their GLP-1 and GIP receptors is 14 times more likely to have nausea from Zepbound, according to the 23andMe research.
From MarketWatch • May 18, 2026
Researchers do not yet understand exactly how this fibronectin variant relates to senescence, but the finding could help scientists better define what makes senescent cells unique.
From Science Daily • May 15, 2026
In the Performance variant, this pack metes out just 255 miles of range, officially.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 25, 2026
From his own plant hybrids, de Vries could dimly tell that variant features, such as stem size, were encoded by indivisible particles of information.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
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.
