All 8 Uses
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News from Nowhere
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- But I do say that there is no unvarying conventional set of rules by which people are judged; no bed of Procrustes to stretch or cramp their minds and lives; no hypocritical excommunication which people are forced to pronounce, either by unconsidered habit, or by the unexpressed threat of the lesser interdict if they are lax in their hypocrisy.†
unvarying = consistent or the samestandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unvarying means not and reverses the meaning of varying. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- But, however, to put it in a cooler way: you expected to see children thrust into schools when they had reached an age conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard to facts to be subjected to a certain conventional course of 'learning.'†
varying = differing; or changing
- Said he: "We have no obvious individual exchange, as you saw this morning when you went a-shopping; but of course there are regulations of the markets, varying according to the circumstances and guided by general custom.†
- The men and women varying in looks as well as in habits of thought; the costume far more various than in the commercial period.†
- The glass, again, though elegant and quaint, and very varied in form, was somewhat bubbled and hornier in texture than the commercial articles of the nineteenth century.†
*varied = differed; or changed
- A sort of irregular war was carried on with varied success all over the country; and at last the Government, which at first pretended to ignore the struggle, or treat it as mere rioting, definitely declared for 'the Friends of Order,' and joined to their bands whatsoever of the regular army they could get together, and made a desperate effort to overwhelm 'the rebels,' as they were now once more called, and as indeed they called themselves.†
- On this bank or bent of the hill, then, we had our mid-day meal; somewhat early for dinner, if that mattered, but we had been stirring early: the slender stream of the Thames winding below us between the garden of a country I have been telling of; a furlong from us was a beautiful little islet begrown with graceful trees; on the slopes westward of us was a wood of varied growth overhanging the narrow meadow on the south side of the river; while to the north was a wide stretch of mead rising very gradually from the river's edge.†
- He hastened as he spoke, and I kept up with him, and presently we came to a little avenue of lime-trees which led us straight to the church porch, from whose open door came the sound of cheerful voices and laughter, and varied merriment.†
Definitions:
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(1)
(vary) to be different, or to changeVary is often used to describe small differences or changes--especially about things of the same type. It would be more common to say "The weight of full-grown elephants varies depending upon diet and other factors," than to say "The weight of elephants varies from that of mice."
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)