var·i·col·ored

(vâr′ĭ-kŭl′ərd, văr′-)

adj.

Having a variety of colors; variegated.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

var•i•col•ored

(ˈvɛər ɪˌkʌl ərd)

adj.

having various colors.

[1655–65; < Latin vari(us) various + colored]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.	1.	varicolored - having a variety of colors varicoloured, variegated varied - characterized by variety; "immigrants' varied ethnic and religious traditions"; "his work is interesting and varied"
	2.	varicolored - having sections or patches colored differently and usually brightly; "a jester dressed in motley"; "the painted desert"; "a particolored dress"; "a piebald horse"; "pied daisies" multicolor, multi-color, multicolored, multi-colored, multicolour, multi-colour, multicoloured, multi-coloured, particolored, particoloured, piebald, pied, varicoloured, calico, motley, painted coloured, colorful - having color or a certain color; sometimes used in combination; "colored crepe paper"; "the film was in color"; "amber-colored heads of grain"

varicolored

adjective

Having many different colors:

motley, multicolor, multicolored, polychromatic, polychrome, polychromic, polychromous, variegated, versicolor, versicolored.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

And the doors are arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the floors are laid in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated, many-colored porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad bricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of Jewish dwellings) save divans--what there is in Moorish ones no man may know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter.

View in context

With a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mast sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out of the black throats of the Castle towers, accompanied by a thundering crash of sound, and instantly every detail of the prodigious ruin stood revealed against the mountainside and glowing with an almost intolerable splendor of fire and color.

View in context

Varicolored, mottled, highly bioturbated paleosol horizons, form distinct and laterally extensive units within the siltstone.

New Cervid (Artiodactyla) Fossils from Middle Siwaliks of Pakistan

I realized then that the lights of Love - that which is rumored to be stronger than death, to be more powerful than even cruel dementia - had been switched on in Nanay's mind, tiny, varicolored harbor lights that blinked and guttered behind the shifting veils of fog and mist.

Fogbound

It was not a big bear, but it was a boar with the classic varicolored hair that gives the grizzled bear its common name.

TO HUNT A GRIZZLY

The Maoao bay is blessed with rich marine life, and the locals have depended on the bay to harvest agar from nature and cultured the varicolored abalone (Haliotis diversicolor).

Stroll along Maoao Bay in northeastern Taiwan and taste the special agar hotpot

what was called tree it bore varicolored leaves children bees all this used to be a place once all this was a nice place once

James Lenfestey, editor. If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems

At Sea (2004-2007) shows three stages in the life of a freighter, from high-tech construction in South Korea to transoceanic passage (a city of varicolored containers crowding the foredeck of a vessel so big it looks like a landmass) to demolition, on a beach in Bangladesh, by skinny workers wielding hand tools, like ants taking apart a watermelon.

Peter Hutton: 1944-2016

Sediments of the Pyrite Member are mainly varicolored conglomerate, sandstone, purplish-red mudstone and thin carbonaceous shale.

Accumulation stages and evolution characteristics of oil shale and coal in the Dunhua-Mishan Fault Zone, Northeast China

The sun's corpse will be a white dwarf; its shroud the lovely, varicolored gases of a cosmic "butterfly."

Cannibalism among the stars

I looked out our third story apartment windows every day at a lush varicolored quilt of cultivated farmland, where all my need of green was granted.

Mingling with the Scots