variant

Etymology

Recorded since c.1380, from Old French variant, from Latin variāns, the present active participle of variō (“to change”).

adj

1. Showing variety, diverse.
2. Showing deviation or disagreement.
3. (obsolete) Variable.
4. (programming) Covariant and/or contravariant.

noun

1. Something that is slightly different from a type or norm.
   All breeds of dog are variants of the species “Canis lupus familiaris”.
   The word "kerosine" is a variant of “kerosene”.
2. (genetics) A different sequence of a gene (locus).
   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. January 12 2022, Paul Clifton, “Network News: Emergency timetables as absences surge due to COVID”, in RAIL, number 948, page 6
3. (computing) A variable that can hold any of various unrelated data types.
4. (linguistics, lexicography) One of a set of words or other linguistic forms that conveys the same meaning or serves the same function.
   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
   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