Let ν be a nondecreasing concave sequence of positive real numbers and 1 ≤ p < ∞. In this note, we introduce the notion of modulus of p-variation for a function of a real variable, and show that it serves in at least two important problems, namely, the uniform convergence of Fourier series and computation of certain K -functionals. Using this new tool, we first define a Banach space, denoted V p [ν], that is a natural unification of the Wiener class BV p and the Chanturiya class V [ν]. Then we prove that V p [ν] satisfies a Helly-type selection principle which enables us to characterize continuous functions in V p [ν] in terms of their Fejér means. We also prove that a certain K -functional for the couple (C, BV p ) can be expressed in terms of the modulus of p-variation, where C denotes the space of continuous functions. Next, we obtain equivalent optimal conditions for the uniform convergence of the Fourier series of all functions in each of the classes C ∩ V p [ν] andwhere ω is a modulus of continuity and H ω denotes its associated Lipschitz class. Finally, we establish sharp embeddings into V p [ν] of various spaces of functions of generalized bounded variation. As a by-product of these latter results, we infer embedding results for certain symmetric sequence spaces.Communicated by Sergij Tikhonov.