adv. [f. prec. + -LY2.]
1. In a various manner; in various or different ways; with variation or variety; differently, diversely.
1627. May, Lucan, VII. 620. The war, that variously had wander’d ore The fields, there stucke, there Cæsars fortune stay’d.
1647. Clarendon, Hist. Reb., II. § 87. This stratagem was never understood; and was then variously spoken of.
1682. J. Norris, Hierocles, 7. But ’twas the Law of the Creation which variously order’d things according to the dignity of their natures.
1748. Hartley, Observ. Man, I. iii. § 6. 390. These Circumstances are variously combined in the various Kinds and Degrees of Madness.
1779. T. Forrest, Voy. New Guinea, 326. Variously do those islands groan under the tyranny of their masters.
1807. G. Chalmers, Caledonia, I. III. vii. 406. About the lineage, and station, of this celebrated personage … writers have written variously.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. xii. 87. The sound commenced again, changing its note variously.
1880. Geikie, Phys. Geog., iv. 199. A ball … with an exterior crust which has been variously estimated at from twenty to a thousand miles in thickness.
b. With adjs.
1794. G. Adams, Nat. & Exp. Philos., IV. xlix. 331. It emits the rays of light in every direction, and those rays are variously refrangible and colorific.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., iii. I. 398. Our prose became less majestic,… less variously musical than that of an earlier age.
1871. Carlyle, in Mrs. Carlyle, Lett., I. 378. The consequences for the time were variously sad.
1871. Tennyson, Last Tourn., 226. So dame and damsel glitter’d at the feast Variously gay.
c. U.S. At different times. rare.
1892. A. E. Lee, Hist. Columbus (Ohio), I. 756. Samuel Perkins … kept a barber shop variously under the National Hotel and the Clinton Bank.
2. Comb. With pa. pples., adjs., or pres. pples., as variously-colo[u]red, -conditioned, -shaped, -working, -wrought, etc.
a. 1700. Evelyn, Diary, 8 Feb. 1645. The mouthes of these spiracles are bestrew’d with variously-colour’d cinders.
1768–74. Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1834), II. 171. A long-complicated succession of variously-working second causes.
1837. Caunter, Lives Moghul Emp., Baber, ix. 238. The variously-coloured page of human life.
1842. Madisonian, 21 April, 2/1. The ceiling is similarly covered with a ground work of white, so mixed up with the blue, and with variously-colored shells, as to form a number of fanciful designs.
1848. Buckley, Iliad, 193. Brass, gold, and variously-wrought iron.
1855. T. Jones, Anim. Kingd. (ed. 2), p. xvi. Variously-shaped eggs of Insects.
1868. Lockyer, Elem. Astron., § 60. The stars shine out with variously coloured lights.
