variety
/vəˈɹaɪ.ɪ.ti/
"variety" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“variety” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,846 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,846
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 10
- tracked misspellings
- 5
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A deviation or difference.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | variety |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /vəˈɹaɪ.ɪ.ti/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #1,846 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “variety” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for variety is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /vəˈɹaɪ.ɪ.ti/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,846 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 13 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 10 likely wrong-spelling variants for variety, with forms such as "avriety", "vairety", and "vareity". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 5 confusable-pair relationships, "verity", "varsity", "varied", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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… The correct English form is variety, spelled V-A-R-I-E-T-Y.
Definition
- 1A deviation or difference.
- 2A specific variation of something.
- 3A specific variation of something.
- 4A specific variation of something.
- 5A specific variation of something.
- 6A specific variation of something.
- 7A collection or number of different things.
- 8A collection or number of different things.
- 9A collection or number of different things.
- 10A collection or number of different things.
- 11Ellipsis of variety performance or variety show (“a type of entertainment featuring a succession of short, unrelated performances by various artistes such as (depending on the medium) acrobats, comedians, dancers, magicians, singers, etc.”).
- 12The quality of being varied; diversity.
- 13The kind of entertainment given in variety performances or shows; also, the production of, or performance in, variety performances or shows.
Etymology
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”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: avriety,vairety,vareity,varietty,varietyy,varieyt,varitey,varriety,vraiety,vvariety
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of variety - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "variety"?
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Using “variety”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is V-A-R-I-E-T-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /vəˈɹaɪ.ɪ.ti/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “verity” - see the side-by-side comparison. variety vs verity
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.