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Vast vs Variety - What's the difference?

vast | variety |

As nouns the difference between vast and variety

is that vast is west (compass point) while variety is the quality of being varied; diversity.

vast

English

Adjective

(en-adj)
  • Very large or wide (literally or figuratively).
  • The Sahara desert is vast .
    There is a vast difference between them.
  • Very great in size, amount, degree, intensity, or especially extent.
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April
  • , author=Anna Lena Phillips , title=Sneaky Silk Moths , volume=100, issue=2, page=172 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=Last spring, the periodical cicadas emerged across eastern North America. Their vast numbers and short above-ground life spans inspired awe and irritation in humans—and made for good meals for birds and small mammals.}}
  • (obsolete) Waste; desert; desolate; lonely.
  • * William Shakespeare, the Life and Death of Richard the Third Act I, scene IV:
  • the empty, vast , and wandering air

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (poetic) A vast space.
  • * 1608': they have seemed to be together, though absent, shook hands, as over a '''vast , and embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds. — William Shakespeare, ''The Winter's Tale , I.i
  • Derived terms

    * vastly * vastness * ultravast

    Statistics

    *

    Anagrams

    * * ----

    variety

    English

    Alternative forms

    * (rare)

    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.
  • Synonyms

    * equational variety

    Hyponyms

    * cultivar

    Derived terms

    * Abelian variety * antivariety * grape variety * variety store * variety show * algebraic variety * affine variety * projective variety * quasiprojective variety * quasivariety

    See also

    * species * information entropy