VARIABILITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Variability

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/vɛriəbˈɪlɪti/ Listen

noun

Variability n.

The quality or state of being variable; variableness.

(Biol.) The power possessed by living organisms, both animal and vegetable, of adapting themselves to modifications or changes in their environment, thus possibly giving rise to ultimate variation of structure or function.

See images of 'Variability'

Etymology of 'Variability'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Variability" Quotes from Famous Books

... of flowering of the two original trees over a 10-year period, and of these young orchard trees over a 3-year period, show that there is great variability in time of flowering, depending upon the sequence of weather events each season. Fertilizer treatments have had no measureable effect. The trees have shed pollen as early as January and as late as April, and stigma receptivity sometimes has continued intermittently ...

— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... disposition. She wore a cotton dress of a forget-me-not blue which suits her pale colouring. She looked quite pretty. When I told her so she blushed like a girl. I was glad to see her in gay humour again. Of late months she has been subject to moodiness, emotional variability, which has somewhat ruffled the smooth surface of our companionship. But to-day there has been no trace of "temperament." She has shown herself the pleasant, witty Judith she knows I like her to be, with a touch of coquetry ...

— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being growth with reproduction; variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and ...

— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... period of fourteen years. Butler, in his Evolution, Old and New, effectually disposes of Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's statement that at the beginning of his work (tome iv., 1753) he affirms the fixity of species, while from 1761 to 1766 he declares for variability. But Butler asserts from his reading of the first edition that "from the very first chapter onward he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow his belief in it.... The reader who turns to Buffon himself will find that the idea that Buffon took ...

— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... were, not without reason, her dearest bit of vanity. The tint of the clear iris suggested sea shallows on a day of light cloud—more green than blue; yet with just enough of the sky's own colour to lend the charm of a constant variability, that harmonised admirably with her iridescent ...

— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

More quotes...