What is the definition of a 'Varient'?

[tcspine]

I don't quite understand what it is. Can someone help?
I'm asking because I ran into it in a specific script that used the 'vartype' function, and one of the return values for that function is 12, which is a varient.

So, what exactly is a varient?

 

[guitarzan]

Explanation of Variants, as they relate to VBScript:

http://www.csidata.com/custserv/onlinehelp/VBSdocs/vbs6.htm

Explanation of the VarType function:

http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript/func_vartype.asp