From Latin 'versatilis' (turning), from 'vertere' (to turn) — shifted from fickleness to adaptability.
Able to adapt or be adapted to many different functions or activities; having many uses or applications.
From Latin 'versātilis' (turning, revolving easily, capable of turning in all directions), from 'versāre' (to turn frequently, to keep turning), the frequentative form of 'vertere' (to turn). The PIE root *wer- (to turn, to bend, to wind) is extraordinarily productive: it underlies Latin 'vertere' → English 'verse' (a turning at the end of a line), 'version' (a turning of a text), 'revert,' 'avert,' 'convert,' 'invert,' 'subvert'; and Germanic *werþaną → Old English 'weorþan' (to become, literally to turn into). The frequentative 'versāre' fed 'versus,' 'versatile,' and 'university' (universus = turned into one). In Latin 'versātilis' described
In Latin, 'versātilis' was not always a compliment. Cicero used it to describe people who were changeable, fickle, untrustworthy — they 'turned' too easily. The positive English sense of versatility (adaptability as a virtue) is a semantic shift that occurred largely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries