noun

1. the quality, state, or fact of varying or being variant; a changing or tendency to change
2. degree of change or difference; divergence; discrepancy
3. official permission to bypass regulations; specif., permission to make nonconforming use of zoned property
4. an active disagreement; quarrel; dispute
5. Accounting the difference between the actual costs of production and the standard or expected costs
6. Law a lack of agreement between two parts of a legal proceeding which should agree, as between a statement and the evidence offered in support of it
7. Physical Chem. the number of degrees of freedom of a system
8. Statistics the square of the standard deviation

Etymology: OFr < L variantia < L varians, prp. of variare, to vary