Word.ws English Dictionary

variants

/ˈvɛɹi.ənts/

variants is the plural of variant.

Meaning of variant

Noun

variant (plural variants)

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

See all 8 meanings of variant

Phrases with variants

Questions about variants

What is variants the plural of?
Variants is the plural of variant.
How do you pronounce variants?
Variants is pronounced /ˈvɛɹi.ənts/.

Words near variants in the dictionary

  1. variant
  2. variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease
  3. variant reading
  4. variant readings
  5. variantly
  6. variants
  7. variate
  8. variated
  9. variates
  10. variating
  11. variation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: variants (page history and authors); variant (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-variants.wav.

Cite this entry: “variants.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/variants. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.