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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

variation.

The act of varying; a partial change in the form, position, state, or qualities of a thing.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˌvɛəɹɪˈeɪʃn̩/Received-Pronunciation/ˌvɛəɹiˈeɪʃn̩/General-American/ˌvæɹiˈeɪʃn̩/General-American/ˌvɛɹiˈeɪʃn̩/General-American
  1. The act of varying; a partial change in the form, position, state, or qualities of a thing.

    uncountable · usually
  2. A related but distinct thing.

    uncountable · usually
    When the process didn't work, we tried a variation.
    All of his soups are variations on a single recipe.
  3. The angular difference at the vessel between the direction of true north and magnetic north.

    uncountable · usually
  4. A line of play that differs from the original.

    uncountable · usually
  5. A technique where material is repeated with alterations to the melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, texture, counterpoint or orchestration; but with some invariant characteristic, e.g. a ground bass.

    uncountable · usually
  6. The modification of a hereditary trait.

    uncountable · usually
  7. Deviation from the mean orbit of a heavenly body.

    uncountable · usually
  8. The situation where two or more linguistic forms appear in the same environment without a change in meaning, the choice of form being determined by factors of dialect, sociolect, register or simply the speaker's preference.

    uncountable · usually
  9. An infinitesimal perturbation applied to a function, typically denoted δf, used to probe how a functional changes.

    uncountable · usually
  10. The corresponding first-order change in a functional induced by such a perturbation, typically denoted δJ[f] and called the first variation.

    uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

From Middle French variation, from Old French variacion, from Latin variātiō, from vary + -ation.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.