various
/ˈvɛːrɪəs
/adjective
1Different from one another; of different kinds or sorts: dresses of various colours his grievances were many and various...
- Monday I leave for Boston with a car full of cameras and film of various shapes and sizes.
- Koi carp found in the UK come in various colours, but are always bright and distinctive.
- The performances are polished and well adapted to the differing styles of the various works.
1.1Having or showing different properties or qualities: their environments are locally various...
- Faces in the Crowd offers a wonderfully various and intelligently chosen spread of images.
- Their environments are locally various and the types of cattle are often divided from each other by the topography of the country.
- Gorky's drawings are so rich, so various, so complex, and often so mysterious that they must be studied with rigorous concentration if we are to tease out their secrets.
determiner & pronoun
More than one; individual and separate: various people arrived late [as pronoun]: various of her friends had called...
- Over the past few days various local celebrities and sports stars have called in to offer their support.
- The school teaches children various instruments from piano to electronic keyboard.
- They will be directed to the various other venues, both public and commercial.
Synonyms
numerous, many, several, copious, abundant, profuse, countless, innumerable, large number of, multiplicity of
Usage
In standard English the word various is normally used as an adjective and determiner. It is sometimes also used as a pronoun followed by of, as in various of her friends had called. Although this pronoun use is similar to that of words such as several and many (e.g. several of her friends had called), it is sometimes regarded as incorrect.
Derivatives
variousness
- The book threatens to collapse under its own variousness.
- The magazines I'd learned most from, Yugen and Locus Solus, were committed to a sense of variousness, and I had no interest in editing a magazine where the bloc of contributors was the same from issue to issue.
- But for all the variousness and inventiveness with which Andrews treats the idea in his early work, one problem arises, acutely explored by P. Inman.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin varius 'changing, diverse' + -ous.