a. The act of varying.
b. The state or quality of being
variant or
variable; a variation.
c. A difference between what is expected and what actually occurs.
2. The state or fact of differing or of being in
conflict.
Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in
the regiment, to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious, sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him, passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his regiment.
War and Peace by
Tolstoy, Leo