Noun

(en noun)

The act of deviating; a wandering from the way; variation from the common way, from an established rule, etc.; departure, as from the right course or the path of duty.

The state or result of having deviated; a transgression; an act of sin; an error; an offense.

(contract law) The voluntary and unnecessary departure of a ship from, or delay in, the regular and usual course of the specific voyage insured, thus releasing the underwriters from their responsibility.

(Absolute Deviation) The shortest distance between the center of the target and the point where a projectile hits or bursts.

(statistics) For interval variables and ratio variables, a measure of difference between the observed value and the mean.

(metrology) The signed difference between a value and its reference value.

Noun

(varieties)

The quality of being varied; diversity.

A specific variation of something.

A number of different things.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-01, author=Katie L. Burke, volume=101, issue=1, page=64, magazine=(American Scientist)

, title= Ecological Dependency , passage=In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature , David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.” His quest leads him around the world to study a variety of suspect zoonoses—animal-hosted pathogens that infect humans.}}

A state of constant change.

(taxonomy) A rank in a taxonomic classification, below species and subspecies.

(cybernetics) The total number of distinct states of a system.

(cybernetics) Logarithm of the base 2 of the total number of distinct states of a system.

(linguistics) A term used for a specific form of a language, neutral to whether that form is a dialect, accent, register, etc. and to its prestige level.

The class of all algebraic structures of a given signature satisfying a given set of identities.