variadic
/vɛɹiˈædɪk/adjective, noun
variadic is an adjective meaning “Taking a variable number of arguments; especially, taking arbitrarily many arguments” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-A-R-I-A-D-I-C, and it appears about once in every 65 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does variadic mean?
adjective
- 1
Taking a variable number of arguments; especially, taking arbitrarily many arguments.
C's printf is one of the most widely used variadic functions.
- 2
Belonging to a variadic function.
each variadic argument
noun
- 1
A function that takes a variable number of arguments.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce variadic?
- US /vɛɹiˈædɪk/
- UK /vɛəɹiˈædɪk/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-variadic.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of variadic
- variadics plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is variadic?
Variadic appears about once in every 65 million words in written English, the 252,559th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Variadic in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense taking a variable number of arguments:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | variadique |
| German | variadisch |
| Spanish | variádico |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does variadic come from?
From variable + -adic.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).