Middle English: from Old French varier or Latin variare, from varius 'diverse'.

• variety from Late Middle English:

  Latin varius ‘diverse’ was the source not only of variety, in the late 15th century, but also of variable (Late Middle English), variegated (mid 17th century), various (Late Middle English), and vary (Middle English). The variety show that consists of a series of different types of act is particularly associated with the British music halls, but the first examples of the term are from the USA where variety was first performed in saloons in front of a heavy-drinking male clientele, but when cleaned up and staged in more legitimate theatres it was transformed into vaudeville. We have the 18th-century English poet William Cowper to thank for the familiar proverb variety is the spice of life. His poem ‘The Task’ contains the line: ‘Variety's the very spice of life, / That gives it all its flavour.’ The dramatist Aphra Behn, who had a similar idea around a century earlier, might possibly have inspired him. Her version, from the play The Rover, reads: ‘Variety is the very soul of pleasure.’