promiscuous

Etymology

From Latin prōmiscuus (“mixed, not separated”), from prō (“forth”) + misceō (“mix”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɹəˈmɪskjuːəs/

Adjective

promiscuous (comparative more promiscuous, superlative most promiscuous)

1. Made up of various disparate elements mixed together; of disorderly composition.
   • 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.

   • 1871–72, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 1

     they 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.

2. Made without careful choice; indiscriminate.
3. Indiscriminate in choice of sexual partners.
4. (networking) The mode in which a NIC gathers all network traffic instead of getting only the traffic intended for it.

Further reading

• promiscuous in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• promiscuous in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• promiscuous at OneLook Dictionary Search