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Promiscuous   /prˈoʊmɪskwəs/  /prɑmˈɪskjuəs/   Listen
Promiscuous

adjective
1.
Not selective of a single class or person.
2.
Casual and unrestrained in sexual behavior.  Synonyms: easy, light, loose, sluttish, wanton.  "He was told to avoid loose (or light) women" , "Wanton behavior"



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"Promiscuous" Quotes from Famous Books



... of this popular rage, Let in the o'erwhelming tide on Harry's head; In that promiscuous fury, who shall know, Among a thousand swords, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... it dead. I suppose it had not enough to eat. The mole has an insatiable appetite, and, according to the observations of some naturalists, it will devour birds. Mr. Bell says that "even the weaker of its own species under particular circumstances are not exempted from this promiscuous ferocity; for if two moles be placed together in a box without a very plentiful supply of food the weaker certainly falls a prey to the stronger. No thoroughbred bulldog keeps a firmer hold of the object of its attack than the mole. Mr. Jackson, a very intelligent ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... trial for witchcraft; and it was allowed, only to prejudice and mislead the minds of a jury and of the public. But it is proper to be taken into view, in forming a just estimate, with an impartial aim, of his general character. The document is found in a promiscuous bundle of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... vagrancy; but his native instinct for the wholesome and illuminating aspect of the life around him brought him more frequently than any other cause to the club of loafers in the general store. And whatever the promiscuous conversation and the racy yarns meant to his associates, they meant vastly more to Lincoln. His hours of social vagrancy really completed the process of his intellectual training. It relieved his culture from the taint of bookishness. It gave substance to his humor. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... seances has arisen from the abuses to which they have led. It is possible that the extent of the evil has been exaggerated, and has thus produced an exaggerated prejudice against darkness as a condition. It is, however, safe to say, that, even if promiscuous seances are ever useful or wise, a promiscuous dark seance should never be sanctioned by ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett

... nor assistants may be able to find them, when called for. The whole question is summed up in the statement that the ability to produce library books when called for, depends strictly upon keeping them in their proper place: and this is quite incompatible with promiscuous ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... clear that they were asking one another who on earth the last arrival was. However, their embarrassment and mine was soon relieved by the announcement of dinner. As there were more male guests than women, there was no need to give me a partner; so we all swept downstairs in a promiscuous flood, and soon were making the vital choice between bisque and consomme. Eating my dinner, I revolved my plans, and decided to make a clean breast of it. So, when we went up into the drawing-room, I made straight for ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... was given to the School which he subsequently established. Like several others of the Greek philosophers, he had a select body of pupils, to whom he delivered his esoteric doctrines; and a larger, more promiscuous, and less accomplished company, to whom he delivered his exoteric lectures on less abstruse subjects. When he had resided thirteen years at Athens, he found himself threatened with a prosecution for impiety, and fled ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... they got under cover and we were alone again, when a hoarse cry arose in the court—it was blood-curdling to us, as every sound these days is full of terror and possibilities. But it turned out to be only the cry of the sentry. There had been promiscuous shooting along the railroad in the village and all our brave soldiers tumbled out of bed, fell down the stair-case one after the other, buckling on swords as they went. It is the greatest wonder to me that we ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... And arguing whether the West Frizelander And Hollander had powre to raise such Tribut, When many of the Governours stood ill Affected to you, all our Garrisons Not sworne then to the Generall States but others, Which the promiscuous multitude gladly followed: When Graves and Vendloe were held by the Spaniard And Nunweghen with violence assaulted, Confusion with one greedy gripe being ready To seaze on all; then when the Sluice was lost And all in muteny at Midleborough, Who then rose ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... said my wife, "have been the ruin of hundreds and hundreds of our once healthy farmers' daughters and others from the country. They go there young and unprotected; they live there in great boarding-houses, and associate with a promiscuous crowd, without even such restraints of maternal supervision as they would have in great boarding-schools; their bodies are enfeebled by labor often necessarily carried on in a foul and heated atmosphere; and at the hours when off duty, they are exposed to all ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... appeared to be distributing the property of the boys in a promiscuous fashion. So far as they knew, he still retained his equipments and a roll of personal effects, fastened in front of the saddle instead of behind it, as was the case with ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... loneliness of the place, and the natural instinct of the canine mind to follow something human, prevailed over the other instinct of watching for the return of his master from this strange resting place. Perhaps the journey in the cart and the promiscuous burial had confused the poor beast's mind as to whether indeed his master lay there at all. With many wistful glances backwards, he still followed the boys; and when they paused at length beside a spring of fresh water, he needed little ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... flogging, to her prison, reserved for dissolute women. The majority of the captives slept as they might, confusedly, in one room. To Jeanne was allotted one of thirty-six little cells of six feet square, given up to her by a prisoner who went to join the promiscuous horde. Probably the woman was paid for this generosity by some partisan of Jeanne. On September 4 the property of the swindler and of her husband, including their valuable furniture, jewels, books, and plate, was sold at Bar-sur-Aube, where ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... on the road, and in the small towns, are generally very dirty, and inhabited by a very motley and promiscuous set of beings; the men, women, children, indeed pigs, fowls, &c. all huddled together. The pigs here appear so well accustomed to a cordial welcome in the houses, that when by chance excluded, you see them impatiently rapping at ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... not quite pleasant, for instance, to hear him speak of Americans in the frank and unconstrained manner which he adopted when talking to us. We could hardly wonder at it when we looked at the promiscuous crowd which formed his idea of American society. Refined and well-bred people there certainly were, but these were precisely the ones who never forced themselves upon his notice, leaving him to be struck and stunned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... merriment, which is supposed to aid the patient in casting off his illness. After passing through the kozhan the Tsannati{COMBINING BREVE} form in line outside and with their feet keep time to the singing and drumming, while the others break ranks and in a promiscuous throng pass before the spectators, first on the men's side, then on the women's. Just before their departure from the corral any woman who feels an indisposition may crouch in their path near the gate, facing the west, and the ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... applied his mind in a confused and blundering way, without being cross-examined into a betrayal that his mind had been entirely neutral in the matter. He thought school much more bearable under this modification of circumstances; and he went on contentedly enough, picking up a promiscuous education chiefly from things that were not intended as education at all. What was understood to be his education was simply the practice of reading, writing, and spelling, carried on by an elaborate appliance of unintelligible ideas, and by much ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... Leibnitz with Bossuet, and Alexander Knox's Remains, down to Rousseau's Confessions. As to the last of these he scarcely knew whether to read on or to throw it aside, and, in fact, he seems only to have persevered with that strange romance of a wandering soul for a day or two. Besides promiscuous reading, he performed some scribbling, including a sonnet, recorded in his diary with notes of wondering exclamation. His family were in London for most of May, his mother in bad health; no other ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the bronchial tubes, to enlarge upon its duty for a moment, is endowed with very fine, hair-like processes called cilia, whose action is to waft secretions from the interior of the lungs outward. Hence the danger of promiscuous spraying with all sorts of everyday nostrums, or of anything which may interfere with the activity of these minute bodies or the ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... shocked at these promiscuous allusions. "And it is very unkind of you to speak so of him, for he admires you very much. I heard Warham say one day to mamma, 'Middleton is regularly spooney upon Gwendolen.' She was very angry with ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... of animals, which were strewed over the floors of subterranean cavities, or which had fallen into tortuous rents connecting them with the surface, might, when swept away by floods, be mingled in one promiscuous heap in the same ossiferous mud or breccia.* (* "Principles" 9th edition ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... eat so much grous (when it was brot out of the parlor), that I reely thought he would be sik; Mr. Dawkinses genlmn (who was only abowt 13 years of age) grew so il with M'Arony and plumb-puddn, as to be obleeged to take sefral of Mr. D's. pils, which 1/2 kild him. But this is all promiscuous: I an't talkin of the survants now, but ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... persistent defamer of Charles Parnell never accused the man of promiscuous conduct, nor of being selfish and sensual in his habit of life. He loved this one woman, and never loved another. And when a scurrilous reporter, hiding behind anonymity, published a story to the effect that Katharine O'Shea had had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... various Idols through the Heathen World. Say, Muse, their Names then known, who first, who last, Rous'd from the slumber, on that fiery Couch, At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof? 380 The chief were those who from the Pit of Hell Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix Their Seats long after next the Seat of God, Their Altars by his Altar, Gods ador'd Among the Nations round, and durst abide Jehovah thundring out of Sion, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... thrown off hastily to please that nobleman. The tragedy was played with some success at Covent Garden; the Lament was recited and sung at Mrs. Cornelys' rooms—a very fashionable resort in Soho Square, got up by a woman of enterprise of that name. It was in whimsical parody of those gay and somewhat promiscuous assemblages that Goldsmith used to call the motley evening parties at his lodgings ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... the slave, with whose condition they were well acquainted, being natives of South Carolina, and having been themselves at one time implicated in the system. Their original intention was to confine their public labors to audiences of their own sex, but they finally addressed promiscuous assemblies. Their intimate knowledge of the true character of slavery; their zeal, devotion, and gifts as speakers, produced a deep impression, wherever they went. They met with considerable opposition from colonizationists, and also from a portion of the New England clergy, on the ground of ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... school-books. Mr. Casey, of the second floor, who was drunk whenever his wife was sober, gave me an insight into the psychology of the beer mug that would have added to the mental furniture of my most scholarly teacher. The bold-faced girls who passed the evening on the corner, in promiscuous flirtation with the cock-eyed youths of the neighborhood, unconsciously revealed to me the eternal secrets of adolescence. My neighbor of the third floor, who sat on the curbstone with the scabby ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... deserved to be noticed; as it produced an utter inattention to them as moral agents. They were kept at work under the whip like cattle. They were left totally ignorant of morality and religion. There was no regular marriage among them. Hence promiscuous intercourse, early prostitution, and excessive drinking, were material causes of their decrease. With respect to the instruction of the slaves in the principles of religion, the happiest effects had resulted, particularly in Antigua, where, under the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... and chaste—the promiscuous intermingling with the world meretricious and contaminating. The mother not trained to the appreciation and discharge of the domestic duties, was never the mother of a great representative mind; because she is incapable of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... by the People if I say so unexpectedly, entertained and instructed by the regular, reasonable and sensible conduct and expression of the People there collected, that I should rather have entertained an idea of being transported to the British senate than to an adventurous and promiscuous assembly of People of a remote Colony, were I not convinced by the genuine and uncorrupted integrity and manly hardihood of the Rhetoricians of that assembly that they were not yet corrupted by venality or debauched ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... hope you will both be very happy!" Or, if a very close friend, also kissing the bride, "All the happiness you can think of isn't as much as I wish you, Mary dear!" But it cannot be too much emphasized that promiscuous kissing among the guests is an offense ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... were familiar with her striking face and her expert interest in horses and yachts; Highland shooting-lodges, English hunting-fields, claimed her for their own. Southern Europe, the Nile, Bayreuth—in short, wherever social life was bright, comfortable and select, there she turned up promiscuous, as the spirit moved her, to be welcomed open-armed as a matter of course. Men, young and old, continued to pay her homage, which was not just the sort of homage they paid to Frances; proposals of marriage were, or might have ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... reform this evil. The planter would no longer be under the necessity of a heavy expenditure for slaves. He would only pay a very moderate price for his labor; a price, indeed, far less than the cost of the maintenance of a promiscuous gang of slaves, which the present ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... passion by habitual unrestraint. It is in this way that what is known as libidinous blood is nursed as well among those who are strictly virtuous, in the ordinary meaning of the term, as among those who are promiscuous in their intercourse. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... dreams of scraps promiscuous and crool, The mills in Butcher's Alley when the watch is on the wine, Those nights he raided Wylie's shed to break the two-up school, I takes a screw at Molly. With a grin that ain't divine He's toyin' with a scar of old I reckernise ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... steel-clad warriors frown along the walls; While on broad canvas in the gilded frame All virtues flourish, and all glories flame?— Say,—if ere noon with idiot laugh you lie Wallowing in wine, or cog the dubious die, Or act unshamed, by each indignant bust, The midnight orgies of promiscuous lust!— Go, lead mankind to Virtue's holy shrine, With morals mend them, and with arts refine, Or lift, with golden characters unfurl'd, The flag of peace, and still a warring world!— —So shall ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... S. Chiara. He was named Giovanbattista Dati, and represented an ancient Lucchese family mentioned by Dante. While Dati carried on his own intrigue with Sister Cherubina Mei, he did his best to encourage the painter in promiscuous debauchery, and to foster the passion which Samminiati entertained for Sister Umilia Malpigli. Dati was taken prisoner and banished for life to the island of Sardinia; but his papers fell into the hands of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... pushed forward. They broke into a wild run on nearing the stream; and then followed a scene which is almost indescribable. The oxen were cast loose, the riders leaped to the ground, and the whole party, men, oxen, and horses, ran in a promiscuous heap into ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... change was by no means welcome to Akizzi. In the Lebanon things were no better. Here Namyauza was struggling with the headmen of Puzruna and Khalunni. "They began hostilities together with Biridashwi against me and said: 'Come, let us kill Namyauza.' But I escaped." This promiscuous warfare raged most fiercely in the south. Here a certain Labaya tried to play the part taken by Aziru in the north. But fortune was less favourable to Labaya. Probably he failed to induce his undisciplined ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr

... just observation upon this head: that the establishment of marriage in all civilized states is built on this natural obligation of the father to provide for his children; for that ascertains and makes known the person who is bound to fulfil this obligation: whereas, in promiscuous and illicit conjunctions, the father is unknown; and the mother finds a thousand obstacles in her way;—shame, remorse, the constraint of her sex, and the rigor of laws;—that stifle her inclinations to perform this duty: and besides, she generally ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... Luck don't owe me anything, except one pill sent promiscuous to his address. What's he going down into his jeans for? Will you tell me that? And shove them crackers north by east. Got to ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... Everett also discovered, for his "great expectations" of Percival were not fulfilled. A desponding student of our poetry recently sighs that Percival is a forgotten poet, and then, seizing a promiscuous assortment of names, exclaims that Charles Sprague, William Wirt, Washington Irving, and Jack Downing may be referred to as forgotten authors. But this is the luxury of woe. Why should not Percival be a forgotten poet? That is to say, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... Many of his books and papers had been sent him from time to time by Wiggleswick, who began to dread the post, the labor of searching and packing and dispatching becoming too severe a tax on the old villain's leisure. These lay in promiscuous heaps about the floor of his bedroom, stepping-stones amid a river of minor objects, such as collars and bits of india rubber and the day before yesterday's Petit Journal. The femme de chambre and the dirty, ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... his Diamonds pours apace; 75 Th' embroider'd King who shows but half his face, And his refulgent Queen, with pow'rs combin'd Of broken troops an easy conquest find. Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, in wild disorder seen, With throngs promiscuous strow the level green. 80 Thus when dispers'd a routed army runs, Of Asia's troops, and Afric's sable sons, With like confusion different nations fly, Of various habit, and of various dye, The pierc'd battalions ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... Contrariwise, if you were seeking violent excitements, you would ask a retired admiral, let us say, his opinion on the question "Do flappers put their hair up too soon?" or some such urgent problem of the day. How jolly these promiscuous exercises in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various

... carelessness. "Men are a rotten, promiscuous lot. That's why it's necessary for a woman to be ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Patsy, decidedly. "I'm all tired out, and poor Myrtle is worn to a frazzle. There's no chance of seeing the canyon to-night, and as for the dancing, card playing and promiscuous gaiety, it doesn't appeal much ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... described the war as unjust and impracticable, and said that the bill exhibited the folly of the ministers. It was, the opposition urged, cruel and indiscriminate in its scope; it excited our seamen to "promiscuous rapine," and provided that American sailors who were taken prisoners might be compelled to serve in the British navy against their own people. Such severity, they said, would drive the Americans to a permanent separation and would eventually land us in a war with ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... Dashall, "I shall introduce you to a new scene in Real Life, well worth your close observation. We have already taken a promiscuous ramble from the West towards the East, and it has afforded some amusement; but our stock is abundant, and many objects of curiosity are ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... worshipping false gods, steeping your benighted souls in the vices of pagans and image-worshippers, it has pleased the God of Israel to give you a rough waking. Can you doubt that this plague, which has desolated a city, and filled many a yawning pit with the promiscuous dead, has been God's way of chastening a profligate people, a people caring only for fleshly pleasures, for rich meats and strong wines, for fine clothing and jovial company, and despising the spiritual blessings that the Almighty Father has reserved for them that love Him? Oh, my afflicted ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... a small saloon with a double tier of berths, besides transoms, which give accommodation on the level of the lower berth. There is a stern cabin, which is a prolongation of the saloon, and not in any way separated from it. There is no ladies' cabin; but sex, race, and colour are included in a promiscuous arrangement. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... side of the foundation a gallery had been raised, which was covered with an awning, and was occupied by a dense mass of white and colored ladies. On another side the gentlemen of the procession stood. The other sides were thronged with a promiscuous multitude of all colors. After singing and prayer, the Hon. Nicholas Nugent, speaker of the house of assembly, descended from the platform by a flight of stairs into the cellar, escorted by two missionaries. The sealed phial was then placed in his hand, and Mr. P., a Wesleyan missionary, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... His visits were, therefore, promiscuous, without any other view than that of amusement; and though his pride was flattered by the advances of the fair, whom he had captivated, he never harboured one thought of proceeding beyond the limits ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... QUESTION.—Why does society wonder at the increase of prostitution, when the public balls and promiscuous dancing is so ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... Vaishnavas. The 'Walkers in the Left Way' (Vamachari), on the other hand, concentrate their thought upon the godhead in its sexually maternal aspect, and follow rites of senseless magic and—theoretically at least—promiscuous debauchery." As has been seen, the religious differences subsequently ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... in some amusement. Scott, who was a man of little education, had periodic spells of promiscuous reading, and frequently surprised ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... Lodge, but it was too promiscuous for a person of his delicate sensibilities who shrank from intimate contact with the uneducated and the socially unwashed. Henry Cabot Lodge always creates the impression that it is a condescension on his ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... also translations from Bogrov, Byron, Frug, Hugo, Nordau, Shakespeare, Spencer, Zangwill, Zola, critical biographies of Aristotle, Copernicus, George Eliot, Heine, Lassalle, Nietzsche, Rousseau, and a great many equally famous men of letters, which followed each other in promiscuous but uninterrupted succession, all handsomely printed and prettily bound, and sold ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... clause of verse 9 we render 'Because' rather than 'Although,' we get the thought that the burial was a sign that the Servant, slain as a criminal, yet was not a criminal. The criminals were either left unburied or disgraced by promiscuous interment in an unclean place. But that body reverently bedewed with tears, wrapped in fine linen clean and white, softly laid down by loving hands, watched by love stronger than death, lay in fitting repose as the corpse of a King till ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... wisdom which has made this collection what it is, and without self-denial it is hardly possible to give the touch of real elegance to a private library. When dollars are not counted the assemblage of books becomes promiscuous. How may we better describe this library than by the phrase Infinite ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... unfair to over-emphasize the voluptuary in Mr. Pepys, but it is Mr. Pepys, the promiscuous amourist; stringing his lute (God forgive him!) on a Sunday, that is the outstanding figure in the Diary. Mr. Pepys attracts us, however, in a host of other aspects—Mr. Pepys whose nose his jealous wife attacked with the red-hot ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... denaturalise them in order to boast that they have been propagated. Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean. These alternatives can never be eluded until some purified and high-bred race succeeds the promiscuous bipeds that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... of Florida] 16 or 18 bits (half of a machine word). This term was used by FORTH hackers during the late 1970s/early 1980s; it is said to have been archaic then, and may now be obsolete. It was coined in revolt against the promiscuous use of 'word' for anything between 16 and 32 bits; 'word' has an additional special meaning for FORTH hacks that made the overloading intolerable. For similar reasons, /gaw'bl/ (spelled 'gawble' or possibly 'gawbul') was in use as a term for 32 or ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... another, I took no notice. Antonio, however, was not so patient, for on being struck with a cudgel, he instantly returned the salute with his whip, scarifying the countenance of a carman. In my endeavours to separate these two antagonists, my horse broke loose, and rushing amongst the promiscuous crowd, overturned several individuals and committed no little damage. It was a long time before peace was restored: at last we were shown to a tolerably decent chamber. We had, however, no sooner taken possession ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... mob, Omar, son of Sanom, and myself, were marched onward through the gate and up a steep narrow winding street, where the solidly-built houses were set close together to obtain the shade, to the market-place. Here, amid the promiscuous firing of long flint-lock guns and quaint ancient pistols, such as one sees in curiosity shops at home, a further demonstration was held, our carriers themselves infected by the popular enthusiasm, seeming also to lose their ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... man and woman in a manner so intimate as to involve the probability of offspring, and it is of primary importance to the State, first in order to secure good births, and secondly good home conditions, that these unions should not be free, nor promiscuous, nor practically universal ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... his Angels glorified, requires Glory from men, from all men, good or bad, Wise or unwise, no difference, no exemption. Above all sacrifice, or hallowed gift, Glory he requires, and glory he receives, Promiscuous from all nations, Jew, or Greek, Or Barbarous, nor exception hath declared; From us, his foes pronounced, glory he exacts." 120 To whom our Saviour fervently replied: "And reason; since his Word all things produced, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... promiscuous assemblages of men and women were not favourable to virtue; for that the sparks of the passions were there blown into ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... people go abroad, wherever they may roam, They will not just be treated as they used to be at home; So take a few promiscuous hints, to warn you in advance, Of how a little English girl will perhaps ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... Asia, in Africa, and even in South America, the primeval trees, however much their magnitude may arrest admiration, do not grow in the promiscuous style that prevails in the general character of the North American woods. Many varieties of the pine, intermingled with birch, maple, beech, oak, and numerous other tribes, branch luxuriantly over ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... real it may at first have seemed, had passed away? Sir Michael O'Dwyer protested, it is true, against General Dyer's monstrous "crawling order," and it was promptly disallowed. But what of many other "orders" which were not disallowed? What of the promiscuous floggings and whippings, the indiscriminate arrests and confiscations, the so-called "fancy punishments" designed not so much to punish individual "rebels" as to terrorise and humiliate? What of the whole judicial or ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... there was a strong party of the guards brought to keep the door, for without that there had been such a promiscuous crowd, and some of them scandalous too, that we should have been all disorder and confusion; but the three head servants managed all that, and had a word to admit all the ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... the hands of his enemy, and the disgrace of Nature, the dear-earned substance of a careful and laborious life? Think of the daughter of an honest, virtuous parent allied to vice and infamy. Think of the hopeful son tied for life by the meretricious arts of the refuse of mercenary and promiscuous lewdness. Have mercy on the youth of both sexes; protect them from their ignorance and inexperience; protect one part of life by the wisdom of another; protect them by the wisdom of laws and the care ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... father, and without regard to disparity of age, thus the future husband may be and often is an old man with several wives. When the man thinks proper he takes his wife to live with him without any further ceremony, but before this she has probably had promiscuous intercourse with the young men, such, if conducted with a moderate degree of secrecy, not being considered as an offence, although if continued after marriage it would be visited by the husband (if powerful enough) upon both the offending ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... any nation of Europe. This being the case, can an American, anxious that his country should receive, as her only safeguard from endless temptations, good moral instruction and mental food, be otherwise than grieved at the promiscuous introduction among ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Church Fathers, Clement, Irenaus, Tertullian, and the rest, influenced by a mixture of prejudice, hatred, and horror, against every thing connected with paganism, declared, in round terms, that the Mysteries were unmitigated sinks of iniquity and shame, lust, murder, and all promiscuous deviltry. Without pausing to except or qualify, or to be thoroughly informed and just, they included the ancient stern generations and their own degraded contemporaries, the vile rites of the Corinthian Aphrodite and the solemn service of Demeter, the furious revels of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... John, sententiously. "They are not always falling in one's way; and these are choice plums and don't come promiscuous—sorter scattered like." ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... the paragon of animals; the cat is the paradox of animals. You cannot reason about the creature; you can only make sure that it has every quality likely to secure success in the struggle for existence; and it is well to be careful how you state your opinions in promiscuous company, for the fanatic cat-lover is only a little less wildly ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... and criticize. First, the traditional theory that the human family life was from the beginning a pure monogamy. Secondly, the so-called evolutionary theory that the human family life arose from confused if not promiscuous sex relations. The first of these theories, favored both by the Bible and Aristotle, held undisputed sway down to the middle of the nineteenth century. Then, after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, certain social theorists began to put forward ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... lists came to be copied and re-copied, it was seen that their usefulness would be increased by putting the words and phrases into alphabetical order, whereby a particular word could be more readily found than by looking for it in a promiscuous list of some hundreds or thousands of words. The first step was to bring together all the words having the same first letter. The copyist instead of transcribing the glossary right on as it stood, extracted first all the words beginning with A; then ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray

... a matter of course. The two are very far from being identical. Primitive marriage is not a matter of sentiment but of utility and sensual greed. Monogamy, in its lower phases, does not exclude promiscuous intercourse before marriage and (with the husband's permission) after marriage. A man appropriates a particular woman, not because he is solicitous for a monopoly of her chaste affections, but because he needs a drudge to cook and toil for him. Primitive ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... society, for they lived right Romanly, which gave my heart considerable satisfaction, who am a Roman born, and hope to die so. When I say right Romanly, I mean that they kept to themselves, and were not much given to blabbing about their private matters in promiscuous company. Well, things went on in this way for some time, when one day my son-in-law brings home a young gorgio of singular and outrageous ugliness, and, without much preamble, says to me and mine, "This is my pal, ain't he a beauty? fall ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... about a dozen priests who were carrying hot water which they dipped out of a boiling caldron and were sprinkling it about in the temple with curious intonations and chantings. They ran back and forth, swishing the water about in a very promiscuous manner. I stood at a respectful distance fearing to get some of the hot fluid on myself. Meanwhile the White Horse stood in the yard well groomed and cared for, little knowing what they were doing in his honor. I could not hear of a single place where their poor ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... others with handkerchiefs tied round their heads. The buffaloes, which had been calmly ruminating among the herbage, heaved up their huge forms, gazed for a moment at the tempest that came scouring down the meadow, then turned and took to heavy, rolling flight. They were soon overtaken; the promiscuous throng were pressed together by the contracting sides of the valley, and away they went, pellmell, hurry-skurry, wild buffalo, wild horse, wild huntsman, with clang and clatter, and whoop and halloo, that made the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... words with glittering eyes, impetuous voice, and face pale with passionate emotion, he was scared; for as his scattered wits returned to him, he felt that he had been playing with edge tools, and had cut and slashed in rather a promiscuous manner. Dazed and dizzy, he sat staring at the excited figure before him, forgetting the indignity he had received, the mistake he had made, the damage he had done, in simple wonder at the revolutions going on under his astonished eyes. When Dolly stopped for breath, ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... cheap a commodity and not dispensed in the same abundance at the street-corners. Heaven forbid, at the same time, that I should undervalue the Roman churches, which are for the most part treasure-houses of history, of curiosity, of promiscuous and associational interest. It is a fact, nevertheless, that, after St. Peter's, I know but one really beautiful church by the Tiber, the enchanting basilica of St. Mary Major. Many have structural character, some a great allure, but as a rule they all lack the dignity of the best of the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... a limited and definite number of men; company implies more unity of feeling and purpose than crowd, and is a less formal and more familiar word than assemblage or assembly. An assemblage may be of persons or of objects; an assembly is always of persons. An assemblage is promiscuous and unorganized; an assembly is organized and united in some common purpose. A conclave is a secret assembly. A convocation is an assembly called by authority for a special purpose; the term convention suggests less dependence upon ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... drawn except on behalf of the business; but then the payments into the bank had by no means tallied with the cash taken; and latterly,—for the last month or so,—the statements of the daily cash taken had been very promiscuous. Some payments had, of course, been made both to Jones and Robinson for their own expenses, but the payments made by Mr. Brown to himself had probably greatly exceeded these. He had a vague idea that he was supreme in money matters, because he had introduced "capital" into the firm. George ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... of his school-fellows to all others, shunning his mother and sisters, ashamed of his female relatives, is the modern individual representative of those early leagues and unions of young men who opposed matriarchy and finally brought about its overthrow and the establishment of male government. The promiscuous sexuality characteristic of adolescence reproduces the first, merely sexual, stage of the erotic life of the race in the life of the individual. As a rule this phase is followed by a period of woman-worship; love has conquered ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... next moment, to the Silenian ribaldry of Tom Brown the younger,—and so keeping up a Saturnalia, in which goat-footed sylvans mix with the maidens of Diana, and the party-colored jester shakes his truncheon in the face of Plato. Only in this wild and promiscuous license can we taste the genuine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... racketeer sweetie has a long arm, however, and Nita gets hers. Justly enough, probably, but I wish to the Lord she had chosen some other town to hide in. Lois Dunlap is the finest woman in Hamilton, but she's too damned promiscuous in her friendships. As it is now, some of the best friends I have in the world are mixed up in this mess, even if it is only as innocent ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... approach them here, and that leaves still an element of gracious shadowiness about the heroines, if not the heroes. The Icelandic heroine has nothing shadowy about her. Her weakest point is the want of delicacy—not in a finicking sense by any means—which a rough promiscuous life to begin with, and the extreme facility and frequency of divorce on the other, necessarily brought about. But she is always, as the French have it, a "person"—when she is good, a person altogether of the best; even when she is bad, a person seldom ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... daughter of fifteen, hastily laid aside her novel and did her best to remove the cups and saucers from the breakfast table, not omitting to break one in her hurry. Meanwhile her mother closed the kitchen door, caught up from the dining-room sofa a promiscuous pile of hats, coats, rubbers and shawls, threw them into a convenient closet, placed the colored cloth on the table and hastened to open the front ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... unspeakably frightful. Those were days of capital punishment for half the offences in the calendar, and of what was to her scarcely less dreadful, of promiscuous imprisonment, fetters, and gaol fever. Poor Aurelia's ignorance could hardly enhance these horrors, and when her perceptions began to clear themselves, her first thought was of flight from a fate equally dreadful to ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and men I saw in Cupid's chain Promiscuous led, a long uncounted train, By sad example taught, I learn'd at last Wisdom's best rule—to profit from the past Some solace in the numbers too I found, Of those that mourn'd, like me, the common wound That Phoebus felt, a mortal beauty's slave, That ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... them because their worth Was known in all they wished—the earth. Brisk boomers once, alert and wise, Why don't they rise, why don't they rise?" The man replied: "Reburied long With others of the shrouded throng In San Mateo—carted there And dumped promiscuous, anywhere, In holes and trenches—all misfits— Mixed up with one another's bits: One's back-bone with another's shin, A third one's skull with a fourth one's grin— Your eye was never, never fixed Upon a company so ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... circumstances of life, include the intercourse amongst friends and neighbours, which may frequently and reasonably call the husband from his home: but what are we to think of the husband who is in the habit of leaving his own fire-side, after the business of the day is over, and seeking promiscuous companions in the ale or the coffee house? I am told that, in France, it is rare to meet with a husband who does not spend every evening of his life in what is called a caffe; that is to say, a place for no other purpose than that of ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... visit to the Livingstone ranch Louis Bassett made no move to go to the cabin. He wandered around the town, made promiscuous acquaintances and led up, in careful conversations with such older residents as he could find, to the Clark and Livingstone families. Of the latter he learned nothing; of the former not much that ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... dark, the driver blundered and upset us off the end of a little sluiceway bridge into a mud-hole. He managed to jump from his seat and hold his team, but there was no help for us who were buttoned in. The mud was soft and deep, and as the wagon settled on its side, we were tumbled in a promiscuous heap into the ooze and slime, which completely covered us. We were not long in climbing out, and seeing lights in a farm-house, made our way to it. As we came into the light of the lamps and of a brisk fire ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... It would be scarcely more reasonable to require of our own contemporaries the peculiar virtues which originated in the social condition of their forefathers, since that social condition is itself fallen, and has drawn into one promiscuous ruin the good and evil which ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... expression [Hebrew: qra bwM ihvh] never is used of a merely outward invocation, but always of such as is the external expression of the faith of the heart; compare the remarks on Zech. xiv. 9. Even on account of this stated condition, it is not possible to think of the deliverance of the promiscuous multitude of Israel, in contrast with that of the Gentiles; for the condition is one which is purely internal, and it affords an important hint for the right understanding of what follows. The [Hebrew: ki] by which it is ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... maids and the prostitutes. The latter satisfy the appetites of men in an artificial and unhealthy manner, while marriage and family cares only bring them labor and burdens instead of riches. Owing to the promiscuous polyandry of prostitution, man can always obtain enough women, while woman can with difficulty obtain a suitable husband. These circumstances have more and more developed the art of flirtation, coquetry and advances on the part of girls, and we can now see, especially ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... the natives, and it is said that the common form, "Come hither all ye people," was the words that Theseus proclaimed when he thus set up a commonwealth, in a manner, for all nations. Yet he did not suffer his state, by the promiscuous multitude that flowed in, to be turned into confusion and be left without any order or degree, but was the first that divided the commonwealth into three distinct ranks, the noblemen, the husbandmen, and artificers. To the nobility he committed ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... and his sanguinary coadjutors, may ever stand in history without a parallel. But what, my countrymen, withheld the ready arm of vengeance from executing instant justice on the vile assassins? Perhaps you feared promiscuous carnage might ensue, and that the innocent might share the fate of those who had performed the infernal deed. But were not all guilty? Were you not too tender of the lives of those who came to fix a yoke on your necks? But I must not too severely blame you for a fault ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... though, for this reason, his father has punished him on more than one occasion, by giving him a sound thrashing, such as brought him to the verge of death, he cannot however change. Whenever he was being beaten, and could no more endure the pain, he was wont to promptly break forth in promiscuous loud shouts, 'Girls! girls!' The young ladies, who heard him from the inner chambers, subsequently made fun of him. 'Why,' they said, 'when you are being thrashed, and you are in pain, your only thought ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... peril" and the "German menace" be then? We should have much less exciting and inciting talk and writing if our nerves and digestions were in better order. Nothing calms the nerves, increases confidence, and lessens the chance of promiscuous quarrelling better than ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... specific talent for administration, can at least recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in others, and so govern through capably benevolent representatives? Where are such voters to be found to-day? Nowhere. Promiscuous breeding has produced a weakness of character that is too timid to face the full stringency of a thoroughly competitive struggle for existence and too lazy and petty to organize the commonwealth co-operatively. Being cowards, we defeat natural selection under ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... the two parties engage in promiscuous war. The Rakshasas have the worst, but Ravana, with his brother Kumbhakarna and his son Meghanada, turns the tide: the monkeys fly, leaving Rama almost unsupported. Lakshmana attacks Meghanada: Ravana quits ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... Approbation of the proceedings of the Commissioners of the Generall Assembly. July 10. 1649. Antemeridiem, Sess. 6. Approbation of the Commissioners sent to his Majesty. July 19. 1649 Postmeridiem, Sess. 18. Act discharging promiscuous Dancing. July 20. 1649. Antemeridiem, Sess. 19. Act concerning the receiving of Engagers in the late unlawfull War against England, to publick Satisfaction, Together with the Declaration and Acknowledgement to be subscribed by them. The Declaration ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... studio, found him painting Mrs. Billington as "Saint Cecilia listening to the angels," and protested gallantly that Reynolds ought to have painted the angels listening to her. For which sprightliness he received immediately a fervent hug and a kiss from those so sweet and promiscuous lips. The skeptics object, that Reynolds exhibited the picture in London in 1790, a year before Haydn reached London, but it is a shame to spoil a good ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... did not give an inch. "You'll put a stop to nothin' this way; an' you'll sure start somethin' that'll be more than stealin' a few calves. The time for stringin' men up promiscuous like, on mere suspicion, is past in Arizona. I reckon there's more Cross-Triangle stock branded with the Tailholt Mountain iron than all the rest of you put together have lost, which sure entitles me to a front seat when ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... and special instinct, sent to do a particular work at the exact and only period when it was possible. At the instant when peace had been established all over Europe, but when neither national character nor national architecture had as yet been seriously changed by promiscuous intercourse or modern "improvement;" when, however, nearly every ancient and beautiful building had been long left in a state of comparative neglect, so that its aspect of partial ruinousness, and of separation from recent active life, gave to every edifice a peculiar interest—half ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Rome with great pomp, and its ashes were deposited in the mausoleum of the Caesars. Caius was recognized as his successor without opposition, and he commenced his reign by issuing a general pardon to all State prisoners, and scattering, with promiscuous munificence, the vast treasures which Tiberius had accumulated. He assumed the collective honors of the empire with modesty, and great expectations were formed of a peaceful and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... not long before he began to show us the stuff that was in him. One night the proceedings were unusually violent at the drinking saloon. A rich pocket had been struck during the day, and the striker was standing treat in a lavish and promiscuous fashion which had reduced three parts of the settlement to a state of wild intoxication. A crowd of drunken idlers stood or lay about the bar, cursing, swearing, shouting, dancing, and here and there firing their pistols into the air out of pure wantonness. From ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Benavides repeated his story of the rockets. In her present tumult, the girl forgot the touch of realism with regard to the firing that he had heard. Certainly there was a good deal of promiscuous rifle-shooting after the departure of the launch, but warships use cannon to enforce their demands, and the boom of a big gun had not woke the echoes of Fernando Noronha that night. Philip deemed the present no time for argument; ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... humorous episode, he told himself, to strike up a friendship with her. He could not imagine why she had adopted such an aloof attitude toward all and sundry; but it was quite evident that she declined anything in the guise of promiscuous acquaintance. And he, like her, felt lonely. There were several Americans in the hotel, and he would probably meet some of the men in the bar or smoking room after the dance was ended. But he would have preferred a pleasant chat with Helen ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... This promiscuous association is tacitly regarded as a necessary evil, the suppression of which would produce alarming and disastrous effects upon the community at large. The passions, indolence, and the love of dress and display are the main agents in producing the class of women we ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... attentions" which society considers the usual prelude to a marriage, with a dexterity which it is all but impossible to evade. The lady is played into his hands with much the same sort of skill that a conjuror exhibits in forcing a card. There are perhaps a number of other ladies present, in promiscuous flirtation with whom he sees, at first glance, an obvious means of escape. But this hope speedily turns out a delusion. One lady is vigilantly guarded by a jealous betrothed; a second is a poor relation, or humble friend, who knows ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... A travelling-equipage stood in the courtyard. On it the concierge was hoisting trunks, and into it was being heaped a promiscuous variety of knick-knackery and wearing apparel. A country postilion—who, but for his dirt, would have looked more like a character in a comedy than a real live, serviceable post-boy—was standing in carpet slippers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... carriage, with its five compartments of ten seats each, formed but one moving chamber, a common room as it were which the eye took in at a glance from end to end. Between its wooden walls, bare and yellow, under its white-painted panelled roof, it showed like a hospital ward, with all the disorder and promiscuous jumbling together of an improvised ambulance. Basins, brooms, and sponges lay about, half-hidden by the seats. Then, as the train only carried such luggage as the pilgrims could take with them, there were valises, deal boxes, bonnet boxes, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... with ease and dignity. She was one of those females that the American world calls gay; in other words, she opened her own house to a very promiscuous society, ten or a dozen times in a winter, and accepted the greater part of the invitations she got to other people's. Still, in most other countries, as a fashionable woman, she would have been esteemed a model of devotion to the duties of a wife and a mother, for she paid ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... are simply these: in making your general arrangements, look carefully over your ground, consider all the objects which you have to accomplish, and the proper degree of time and attention which each deserves. Then act upon system. Let the mass of particulars which would otherwise crowd upon you in promiscuous confusion be arranged and classified. Let each be assigned to its proper time and place, so that your time may be your own, under your own command, and not, as is too often the case, at the mercy of the thousand accidental circumstances which ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... are being brought in every moment. It is something horrifying to see one portion of the huge school taken up by corpses, each with a clean white sheet covering it, and on the other side of the room a promiscuous heap of bodies in all sorts of shapes and conditions, looking for all the world like decaying tree trunks. Among the number identified are two beautiful young ladies named respectively Mrs. Richardson, who was a teacher in the kindergarten school, and Miss Lottie Yost, whose sister I afterwards ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... were employed until they gave up the ghost. The conquerors had appropriated to themselves the best-looking of the Indian females, while their husbands—for Indians marry very early in life—were consigned to the mines as laborers and carriers in the bowels of the mountain. From this promiscuous intercourse, so early introduced, has arisen the present mixed-blood population of Mexico. The offspring of sin, they are a nation of sinners. The pure Indians are the descendants chiefly of the unenslaved tribes, like the Tlascalans and Tezcucans, who carried ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... the American People. Held in booths, where the Voter puts in his ballot, and The Machine elects whatever it chooses. A day when the lowliest may make their mark and even beggars may ride; when the Glad Mit gets promiscuous and everything ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz

... them stood too much in awe of the planters to incur the risk of their displeasure. As the town of Halifax could boast of several little stores, and was the trading post of Feltons, Conacanara, and Montrose, your great-grandfather, in order to prevent the evils of promiscuous trading, caused certain coins to be struck off, of no value except to the one merchant with whom his ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... them. Woe to the person who attempts this difficult feat without the aid of a good pair of sea-legs; he is sure to be pitched head foremost by the motion of the vessel into the bosom of some family peacefully snoozing in a promiscuous heap, or to step on the slim, dusky figure of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... Randolph, when attending Mr. Willard's preaching at the South Church, was observed "to make a curtsey" at the name of Jesus "even in prayer time"; and the colony was threatened with "gynecandrical or that which is commonly called Mixt or Promiscuous Dancing," and with marriage according to the form of the Established Church. The old order was changing, but not without producing friction and bitterness of spirit. The orthodox brethren stigmatized Ratcliffe as "Baal's priest," and the ministers from their pulpits ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... voice—he stopped rubbing the injured shin to look up at her. Then he straightened slowly, his mouth ludicrously open. Her head was bound in a white towel. Her skirt was pinned back. Her sleeves were rolled up. Chairs, tables, rugs, ornaments, were huddled in a promiscuous heap. Mrs. Hosea C. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... so his pleasures and disappointments don't enter into my sphere. Promiscuous universal sympathy is too great a tax on the nervous system. Why should I distress myself about a man I ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... but women and children indiscriminately murdered, while whole settlements were involved in promiscuous desolation. Each was made a scourge to the other; and the unavoidable calamities of war were rendered doubly distressing by the dispersion of families, the breaking up of settlements, and an addition of savage cruelties, to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... somewhat crested crown. They are numerous in southern Texas and also in the interior of southern Florida, where they are resident. They build bulky, but shabby nests of sticks, weeds and grass, piled into a promiscuous heap, generally located in bushes or low trees. Their two or three eggs have a ground color varying from buff to bright cinnamon, and are dotted and blotched with all shades of brown and umber. On the whole, these eggs show a greater diversity ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... spirits away to Pulotu, the dominions of Saveasiuleo. When they touched the water they were not to look to the right or to the left, or attempt to make for either side. Nor could they come back, as the force of the current rendered that impossible. There was a continued and a promiscuous company of them. Those who had died of various diseases—the good-looking and the unsightly, the little children and the aged, chiefs and common people—all drifted along together. They were, however, ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... any special dignity, of a private order—little old miniatures, medallions, pictures, books; books in leather bindings, pinkish and greenish, with gilt garlands on the back, ranged, together with other promiscuous properties, under the glass of brass-mounted cabinets. His attention took them all tenderly into account. They were among the matters that marked Madame de Vionnet's apartment as something quite different from Miss Gostrey's little museum of bargains ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... her?" Eva's hot temper took fire at once. "Shut up yourself, Lena Barton!" she flared. "I ain't goin' back on Miss Laura any more than you are. Mebbe you're so flush that you can drop pennies an' nickels 'round promiscuous, but me—well, I ain't—that's all," and she marched on ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... remarkable, however, that in this work the artist embodied Death not in the form commonly used in his day, but in the old Etruscan figure before mentioned. Orcagna's Death is a female, winged like a bat, and with terrible claws. Armed with a scythe, she swoops down upon the earth and reaps a promiscuous harvest of popes, emperors, kings, queens, churchmen, and noblemen. In the rude manner of the time, Orcagna has divided his picture into compartments. In one of these we see St. Macarius, one of the first Christian hermits, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... is to render persons agreeable companions to themselves, and useful members of society; to support solitude with pleasure, and to pass through promiscuous temptations with prudence; 'tis presumed, this compilation will not be unacceptable; being composed of pieces selected from the most celebrated moral writers in the English language, equally calculated to promote the principles of religion, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... sculptors have no power. The style of the work is of the sixteenth and not of the eighteenth century—with a few obvious exceptions that suit the year 1709 exceedingly well. Against such considerations as these, a statement made at the beginning of this century referring to a century earlier and a promiscuous date upon one chapel, can carry but little weight. I shall assume, therefore, henceforward, that we have here groups designed in a plastic material by Tabachetti, and reproduced in wood by the best local wood-sculptor available, with the exception ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... centre of this labyrinth was a castle of the early promiscuous order of architecture—an order which was until recently much employed in the construction of powder-works, but is now entirely exploded. In this baronial hall lived an eligible single party—a giant so tall he used a step-ladder to put on his hat, and could ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)



Words linked to "Promiscuous" :   unchaste, indiscriminate, promiscuity



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