indiscriminate

indiscriminate, wholesale, sweeping are comparable when they mean including all or nearly all within the range of choice, operation, or effectiveness.

Something is indiscriminate which does not distinguish the deserving from the undeserving but acts (as in giving, treating, selecting, or including) regardless of individual deserts or merits

{

indiscriminate charity

}

{

indiscriminate praise

}

{

the critic does a wrong who brings them under his indiscriminate censure— Quiller-Couch

}

{

an indiscriminate lavish Irish meal, sausages, eggs, bacon, all together on one plate— O'Flaherty

}

Wholesale often implies indiscriminateness, but sometimes it carries almost no such suggestion; however, it regularly stresses extensiveness, usually suggesting that no person or thing within the range of choice, operation, or effectiveness has escaped

{

the wholesale vaccination of a community

}

{

communism can spread only ... as a development of existing economic civilization and not by a sudden wholesale overthrow of it— Shaw

}

{

the continuous battle of this generation against wholesale character assassination through the application of indiscriminate labels— Roy

}

Sweeping implies a reaching out in or as if in a wide circle to draw in everyone or everything within range; it usually carries a stronger suggestion of indiscriminateness than wholesale and often specifically implies exceeding the bounds of right, justice, or jurisdiction or suggests generality rather than a concrete, specific character

{

sweeping reforms

}

{

sweeping accusations

}

{

a sweeping and consummate vengeance for the indignity alone should satisfy him— Meredith

}

{

the statute is of a very sweeping and general character— Justice Holmes

}

Analogous words: promiscuous, motley, heterogeneous, assorted, *miscellaneous: uncritical, *superficial, shallow

Antonyms: selective: discriminating