variegated or varied?

I was listening to an interview in which the speaker mentioned a variegated response to a proposal.  This struck me as odd. I would have expected varied, not variegated which I think of as relating to patterns of colour.

 The OED gives variegated as a term used specifically in botany to mean ‘marked with patches or spots of different colour’.  It is then used in both botany and zoology in the naming of plants and animals that have this feature, so we have the variegated rhododendron or the variegated marmot.

 It is also used in mineralogy to describe rocks that are patterned in some way, so we have variegated sandstone or variegated copper ore.

 The adjective variegated is the past participle of the verb to variegate meaning ‘to make varied or diversified, particularly by the use of different colours”.  This is a word which peaked in the early 1800s and declined in use from then on.

 The adjective variegated became firmly associated with botany and zoology  throughout the 1800s, and firmly linked to patterns of colour.  So while there is one citation in the OED for 1897  (I go along the same variegated path I came by yesterday), that use of variegated derives from the verb ‘to make varied’ and means ‘made varied or provided with variety’.  It would by that stage have been  an unusual usage.

 Certainly today a phrase such as ‘the variegated response of the Labor Party’ strikes us as faintly amusing. I think varied is quite sufficient.