promiscuous
English
Etymology
From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin prōmiscuus (“mixed, not separated”), from prō (“forth”) + misceō (“mix”).
Pronunciation
Adjective
promiscuous (comparative more promiscuous, superlative most promiscuous)
- Made up of various disparate elements mixed together; of disorderly composition.
- Synonym: motley
- 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, ll. 379-80
- Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, / While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof.
- 1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter I, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 4:
- [T]hey had both been educated [...] on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and afterwards in a Swiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their orphaned condition.
- Made without careful choice; indiscriminate.
- (derogatory) Indiscriminate in choice of sexual partners, or having many sexual partners.
- (networking) The mode in which an NIC gathers all network traffic instead of getting only the traffic intended for it.
Derived terms
Translations
made up of various disparate elements mixed together
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made without careful choice; indiscriminate
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indiscriminate in choice of sexual partners
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being in a mode in which a NIC gathers all network traffic
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See also
Further reading
- “promiscuous”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “promiscuous”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- “promiscuous”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.