variety

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European*h₁weh₂-
2. Proto-Indo-European*h₁wh₂-s-?
3. Proto-Italic*wasios?
4. Latinvarius
5. Latinvarietās
6. Middle Frenchvarieté
7. Latinvarietās
8. English todayvariety

From Middle French varieté (“variety”) (modern French variété (“variety; genre, type”)) or directly from its etymon Latin varietās (“difference; diversity, variety”) + English -ty (suffix forming abstract nouns from adjectives); by surface analysis, various + -ety. Varietās is derived from varius (“different, diverse, various; variegated”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“to abandon; to give out; to leave”)) + -tās (suffix forming feminine abstract nouns indicating a state of being). The English word displaced the native Old English mislīcnes. Sense 1.3.2 (“total number of distinct states of a system; logarithm to the base 2 of the total number of distinct states of a system”) was coined by the English psychiatrist William Ross Ashby (1903–1972) in his work An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956). Cognates * Galician variedade (“variety”) * Italian varietà (“difference; variety”) * Portuguese variedade (“variety”) * Spanish variedad (“breed; variety”)

Words from the same roots

First known use, by meaning

• from 1956. The total number of distinct states of a system; also, the logarithm to the base 2 of the total number of distinct states of a system.