Meaning

adjective of many different kinds purposefully arranged but lacking any uniformity

adjective considered individually

adjective distinctly dissimilar or unlike

originBorrowed from Middle French varieux, from Latin varius (“manifold, diverse, various, parti-colored, variegated, also changing, changeable, fickle, etc.”). By surface analysis, vary + -ous.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0