miscellaneous

miscellaneous, assorted, heterogeneous, motley, promiscuous are comparable when they mean marked by diversity or variety and are applied to the things that make up a group, a collection, or a mass, or to a group, collection, or mass.

Miscellaneous usually implies a mixture of many kinds, showing few signs of selection, and often suggesting dependence on chance

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there is always a miscellaneous assemblage at the meetings of the association

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Joyce's wide and miscellaneous acquaintanceship— Colum

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the contents of the chests were of the most miscellaneous description:—sewing utensils, marling spikes, strips of calico, bits of rope— Melville

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what appears at first to be a miscellaneous lot of books often reveals, on closer inspection, an interesting pattern of interrelationships— Redman

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Assorted (see also ASSORT) and the related noun assortment also imply a mixture but not a haphazard one; they carry the implications of a selection including various kinds or involving consideration of various tastes or needs

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a box of assorted candies

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there were passable performances of potpourri from assorted operas— Copland

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none of these authors has published books of assorted essays— R. B. West

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a case containing an assortment of tools

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Heterogeneous is applicable chiefly to masses or groups in which the individuals or the elements are in proximity or close relationship to each other by chance; it suggests not only variety or diversity in the individuals or the elements but also absence of uniformity or unity and little evidence of fusion

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the task of transforming a heterogeneous selection of mankind into a homogeneous nation— Russell

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the family is heterogeneous enough to make quite a good party in itself— Rose Macaulay

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the heterogeneous structure of granite

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a photograph lacks organization and unity .... It is haphazard, heterogeneous, aimless, and amorphous—just as is nature— S. S. Van Dine

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Motley adds to heterogeneous the suggestion of discordance in the individuals or elements or their striking contrast to each other; perhaps from the notion of discordance it is more depreciative than the foregoing terms and is more likely to qualify groups made up of elements felt as inferior or undesirable

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one would enquire from whence this motley style did first our Roman purity defile— Dryden

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motley support drawn from Tammany Hall Irish, Wall Street bankers, and odds and ends of all factions— Partington

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that motley aggregation of impudent and flattering camp followers— Walker

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Promiscuous may suggest haphazardness or the appearance of it, but it usually implies selection that is completely devoid of discrimination and that results in disorderly confusion; thus, a miscellaneous acquaintanceship may imply a catholicity of taste, but a promiscuous acquaintanceship implies an absence of taste and good judgment; from a description of a club's membership as heterogeneous one might infer its interesting diversity but from a description of it as promiscuous one can infer only a diversity that is distasteful and senseless from the point of view of the speaker or writer

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a classless, promiscuous world where True Story and London's New Statesman and Nation share the same rickety table— Time

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For this reason, promiscuous as applied specifically to people or their acts, emotions, and relations stresses not only lack of discrimination, but lack of restriction within bounds set (as by prudence, good sense, or sound morals); thus, promiscuous charity is imprudently lavish charity extended without reference to the needs of those helped; promiscuous blame suggests stupid indifference as to the persons or things one's censure may affect; promiscuous sexual intercourse implies licentious disregard of normal standards of conduct

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sanity involves some order and discrimination, rather than a promiscuous acceptance of all our impulses as good— Cohen

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the dangers to civil freedom of a promiscuous and unprincipled attack on radicalism— Schlesinger b. 1917

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Analogous words: various, diverse, divergent, disparate, *different: multifarious, divers, sundry, *many

Contrasted words: similar, alike, *like, identical, uniform