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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



... little time to think of air and open spaces. The science of town-planning was unborn. Its hospital, far from having any special advantage of position, was exposed to peculiar dangers. It lay on the edge of the old cathedral graveyard, where the victims of cholera had received promiscuous pit-burial only ten years before. The uppermost tier of a multitude of coffins reached to within a few inches of the surface. These horrors have long been swept away; but, when Lister took charge of his wards in the Infirmary, they were infected by the poisonous air generated so close at hand, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... punished with imprisonment. It is indeed curious after travelling in America and our colonies, to find, sturdy, rough, independent characters behaving with extraordinary meekness and docility. Drunken brawls and promiscuous revolver shooting are unknown in the Congo, for the simple reason, that it is impossible up country to procure drink. There are no drink shanties or gambling dens and indeed no amusements of any kind. Men work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., have their dinner and go to bed. Very little news penetrates ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... part of the business was to take the simplest course to establish the falsity. There were difficulties indeed attached even to the simplest course, but there would be a difficulty the less if one should forbear to meddle in promiscuous talk with the general, suggestive topic of intimate unions. It is certain that in these days Nick cultivated the practice of forbearances for which he didn't receive, for which perhaps he ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... she exclaimed in pouting reproach, "do I appear as promiscuous as that? You may call me a 'blue book,' but spare my snobbery the opprobrious epithet of 'directory.' There goes the fascinating young Mrs. Shurly with Purcell Burroughs in her toils. Did you catch the fine oratory of the glance she threw us? It said, 'Dorothy Gwynne, how dare you ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... human inhabitants, Gourbi Island was now left to the tenancy of such birds and beasts as had escaped the recent promiscuous slaughter. Birds, indeed, that had migrated in search of warmer shores, had returned, proving that this fragment of the French colony was the only shred of land that could yield them any sustenance; but their life must necessarily be short. It was utterly impossible that they could ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... thanks to those who favored me with their votes) less like a candidate than an unconcerned spectator of a public proceeding. But here the face of things is altered. Here is an attempt for a general massacre of suffrages,—an attempt, by a promiscuous carnage of friends and foes, to exterminate above two thousand votes, including seven hundred polled for the gentleman himself who now complains, and who would destroy the friends whom he has obtained, only because he cannot obtain ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... select parlours did not open upon the main street, it being far from her desire to attract promiscuous trade. The parlours, indeed, were situated upon one of the "nicest" streets in Coombe and occupied a corner lot, so that a splendid view down two of the most genteel residential streets was obtainable from ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... the light of spirituality had as yet scarcely penetrated. Her thought had begun to shape a definite purpose; she was still to be a message-bearer, but the message must be set forth in her life conduct. The futility of promiscuous verbal delivery of the message to whomsoever might cross her path had been made patent. Jesus taught—and then proved. She must do likewise, and let her deeds attest the truth of her words. And from the day that she bade the suggestions of fear and evil leave ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the most debased and worthless of the whites. Corruption, and all the train of petty offences, are the consequences. Proprietors of slaves in whose neighborhood any free colored family is situated, know how infectious and pernicious this intercourse is.' * * * 'Who, if this promiscuous residence of whites and blacks, of freemen and slaves, is for ever to continue, can imagine the servile wars, the carnage and the crimes which will be its probable consequences, without shuddering with horror?' ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... 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 Chanzhini{COMBINING BREVE} one by one leap over her, ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... all got out by mistake at wayside stations: at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo—and it wasn't at all different from the old world they'd left, but only rather smaller and dingier and more promiscuous." ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... at last it seemed as though the 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 ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... preemptory, prelate, preliminary, preposterous, prerequisite, prerogative, presentiment, primogeniture, probation, probity, proclivity, procrastinate, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profligate, progenitor, proletarian, prolific, prolix, promiscuous, promissory, propaganda, propensity, prophylactic, propinquity, propitiatory, propitious, proprietary, prorogue, proselyte, prototype, protuberant, provender, proximity, prurient, psychical, psychological, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... filled with dead bodies, which remained without burial during the general consternation. The despair of the citizens was sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent and the helpless. The private revenge of forty thousand slaves was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes which they had formerly received were washed away ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his broad verses, they were not therein so cautious but they were as dissolute in their promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirms in Andromache, that their women were all unchaste. Thus much may give us light after what sort of books were prohibited among ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... happen'd into a very large promiscuous Company of Gentlemen and Tradesmen, at a Tavern near the Royal-Exchange; I had not been seated amongst them a Quarter of an Hour, before a Waiter came to top the Candles, and let a Snuff fall upon the Sleeve of my Coat, which instantly burnt a great ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson

... 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 door to admit ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... 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 (having divested himself of his boots of office) harnessing three ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... 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 on the subsequent wars of Cortez, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... Universities afford, and in India most of the secondary schools as well as colleges are non-residential. The majority of those who attend them, unless they live at home, have therefore to board out with friends or to live in promiscuous messes, or, as is too often the case, in lodgings of a very undesirable character, sometimes even in brothels, and almost always under conditions intellectually, morally, and ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... medicine; you know that. You get one and he'll keep you off the trail instead of on. I can follow the trail as soon as he quits covering it. Get the canteens and come on. We don't need a million cowboys running round promiscuous over the sand. Numbers don't help in trailing an Injun. It's experience and patience. It may take us two weeks and we'll outfit for that. But we'll get him in the ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection. With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, 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 ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... tell her you got it at a cheap sale. Say you went to a jumble sale and bought it; you paid one-and-twopence-halfpenny for it. That's the right figure, isn't it, for the best things at a jumble sale? Tell her it's quite new, and was thrown in promiscuous like." ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... this terrible master presented the three saddest phantoms of the Middle Ages—the spectre of death omnipotent, the solitude of the desert as the only refuge from a sinful and doomed world, the dread of Divine justice inexorable and inevitable. In those piles of the promiscuous and abandoned dead, those fiends and angels poised in mid-air struggling for souls, those blind and mutilated beggars vainly besieging Death with prayers and imprecations for deliverance, while she descends in her robe of woven wire to mow down ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... 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 mixed! Go now among them there and blow: 'Twill be as good as any show To ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... Now, that was right ambitious of you. But I reckon I'll have to interfere with them again. Go through him, kid, and relieve him of any guns he happens to be garnished with. Might as well help yourself to his knives, too. He's so fond of letting them fly around promiscuous he might hurt himself. Good. Now we can sit down and have a friendly talk. Where did you say you was intending to spend the next few weeks before I interrupted so unthinking and disarranged your plans? I'm talking to you, ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... Adelphi Hotel she had realized Rosamund's innate and fastidious purity. To forgive even one infidelity would be a tremendous moral triumph in such a woman as Rosamund. But if Cynthia Clarke threw Dion Leith away, and he fell into promiscuous degradation, then surely Rosamund's nature would rise up in inevitable revolt. Even if she came to Constantinople then it would surely ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... a tidy sum of money doing it, why shouldn't I consent? I saw no reason for refusal. To be sure the method was not lawful, yet was advised by a lawyer, and agreed to by the administrators. Besides, the keeping of a few promiscuous charities out of such a gift did not seem especially wrong—I knew nothing, cared nothing for their loss. They were but names of no significance. Vail, watching the expression of my face in the light, seemed ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... perfect in the theory than in the practice of passive obedience. Though they might deride the austere manners and scriptural phrases of the Puritans they were still at heart a religious people. The majority saw no great sin in field-sports, stage- plays, promiscuous dancing, cards, fairs, starch, or false hair. But gross profaneness and licentiousness were regarded with general horror; and the Catholic religion was held in utter detestation by nine-tenths of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 the door ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... in Boston, and executed by the cruel hand of Preston 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 ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... bad of you," said the lady with some pardonable irritation. "Why do you bring people to dinner in this promiscuous way? It will quite upset the table. Just fancy asking an old Welsh clergyman to dine, who has not the slightest pretensions to being a gentleman, when one has the Prime Minister and a Bishop coming—and a clergyman without dress clothes too. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... covered with a Turkish carpet; but there was very little furniture in it, and the atmosphere seemed chill and heavy, for it was the old unrenewed air of a room that was never used. On a large centre table a number of artistic objects were lying together in a promiscuous jumble: Japanese knick-knacks; an ivory card-case that had lost its cover, and a broken- bladed paper-knife; glove and collar and work-boxes of sandal-wood, mother-of-pearl, and papier-mache, with broken hinges; faded fans and chipped ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... have lived in a tumble-down stone hut about fifteen feet square, half open to the sky (its only saving quality); in one corner the entire family sleeping in a promiscuous pile on a bed of leaves; in another a domestic zoo consisting of half a dozen hens, a cock, a goat, and a donkey. They neither read, think, nor exchange ideas. The sight of a uniform means to them either a ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... 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 riches in a ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... to the scene from their childhood, they see no indelicacy in it; it is a matter of course, and honi soit qui mal y pense: certainly there is far less indecency and immorality resulting from this public bathing, than from the promiscuous herding together of all sexes and ages which disgraces our own lodging-houses in the great cities, and the hideous hovels in which some of our labourers have to pass their lives; nor can it be said that there is more confusion of sexes amongst the lowest orders in ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... Poisonous Drugs and Promiscuous Surgical Operations in Conformity with the Constructive Principle ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... with sexual matters, from rape downwards, may be viewed from two or three different sides, and are complicated in ways which render the subject difficult of discussion in a work intended for promiscuous circulation. Here, as in the last case—viz. of theft or robbery—we must be careful in considering such offences to eliminate the element of brutality or personal injury, which may sometimes accompany the crime referred to, from the offence itself. For the rest I confine myself to ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... Netherlander as their foe. Gentleman and peasant, Protestant and Catholic, priest and layman, all were plundered, maltreated, outraged. The indignation became daily more general and more intense. There were frequent skirmishes between the soldiery and promiscuous bands of peasants, citizens, and students; conflicts in which the Spaniards were invariably victorious. What could such half-armed and wholly untrained partisans effect against the bravest and most experienced troops in the whole world? ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... against the theory that the man who breaks them is influenced by any general hatred of Napoleon. Considering how many hundreds of statues of the great Emperor must exist in London, it is too much to suppose such a coincidence as that a promiscuous iconoclast should chance to begin upon three specimens of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... skilled, seemed to rise from the stones of the pavement. Poppa invited them all, by pantomime, to walk up and have an octopus, and when the crowd began to gather from the side alleys, and the enthusiasm grew too promiscuous, he bought the barrel outright and watched the carnival from the middle of the canal. He often speaks of his enjoyment of the Venetian octopus, eaten in cold blood, without pepper, salt, or vinegar; and the effect, when I am not there, ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... other than that the man by previous agreement with the woman gives her some zeewant or cloth, which on their separation, if it happens soon, he often takes again. Both men and women are utterly unchaste and shamelessly promiscuous in their intercourse, which is the cause of the men so often changing their wives and the women their husbands. Ordinarily they have but one wife, sometimes two or three, but this is generally among the chiefs. They have also among them different conditions of persons, such as noble ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... 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 Moravians and Methodists, they had so far profited, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... individually in 1905, the most attractive meeting, in their various neighborhoods, was the annual old-time picnic, made interesting by the presence of a "merry go round" that relieved them of their nickels, and a platform, where promiscuous dancing was sure to be continued through most of the night, and be accompanied with ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... his skin, he would take a dare to do anything that would hurt his self-respect, for fear the boys would laugh at him, or say that he was afraid, if he refused. So one day during recess Jim Hicks dared him to eat a piece of dirt. Fatty hesitated a little, because, while he was pretty promiscuous about what he put into his stomach, he had never included dirt in his bill-of-fare. But when the boys began to say that he was afraid, ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... Another, a little boy of eight years old, was found to be firmly impressed with a belief in the existence of dragons, and openly stated that it was his intention when he grew up, to rush forth sword in hand for the deliverance of captive princesses, and the promiscuous slaughter of giants. Not one child among the number interrogated had ever heard of Mungo Park,—some inquiring whether he was at all connected with the black man that swept the crossing; and others whether he was ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... priests and monks confessing those in extremity—soldiers transporting from the field the bodies of the more honoured among the slain—peasants mourning over their trampled crops and plundered habitations—and widows and orphans searching for the bodies of husbands and parents, amid the promiscuous carnage of two combats. Thus wo mingled her wildest notes with those of jubilee and bacchanal triumph, and the plain of the Garde Doloureuse formed a singular parallel to the varied maze of human life, where joy and grief are so strangely mixed, and where the confines of mirth and pleasure ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... friend, on the subject of your career. I think the time will come when you will feel that music is almost too sacred a thing to be given away for money to a careless and promiscuous public. However this may be, remember that scarce one of the self-styled artists who cater for the crowd deserves to be called MUSICIAN in the highest sense of the word. Most of them seek not music, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... chief Ice Glacial Island Insular King Regal, royal Kitchen Culinary Life Vital, vivid, vivarious Lungs Pulmonary Lip Labial Leg Crural, isosceles Light Lucid, luminous Love Amorous Lust Libidinous Law Legal, loyal Mother Maternal Money Pecuniary Mixture Promiscuous, miscellaneous Moon Lunar, sublunary Mouth Oral Marrow Medulary Mind Mental Man Virile, male, human, masculine Milk Lacteal Meal Ferinaceous Nose Nasal Navel Umbilical Night Nocturnal, equinoctial Noise Obstreperous One First Parish Parochial People Popular, populous, public, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... 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 of a few figures cut ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... ignorant or an unprincipled mind-practice in opposition to the straight and narrow path of Christian Science. Promiscuous mental treatment, without the consent or knowledge of the individual treated, is an error of much magnitude. People unaware of the indications of mental treatment, know not what is affecting them, and ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy

... direction, and by close observance of indications rather than chance, or by having them pointed out; for the one that reads this, and goes ahead of you to the spot, and either destroys the remainder by promiscuous cuttings, or carries them off in bulk, as there are many who go to a locality, and what they cannot carry off they destroy, give you a disappointment in finding nothing; consequently, I have considered that this digression from our subject in detail was pardonable, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... places are filled by a population of many thousands of miserable creatures. The houses in which they live are altogether unfit for human beings, and every apartment is filled with a promiscuous crowd of men, women and children, in a state of filth and misery. In many of the houses there is scarcely any ventilation. Dunghills lie in the vicinity of the dwellings, and from the extremely defective sewerage, filth of every kind ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... 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 urged Leander through ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... promiscuous cheers for "the captain," "the prefects," "the cook," "Jason," "the school cat," "Thucydides!" and finally for "Dulce Domum!" Grandcourt broke ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... 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 ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... behind which was various simple but very useful ware; this, together with two extra chairs for strangers, standing at the other corner, constituted the furniture. There was a strong legal air about the table, notwithstanding its promiscuous burden. At the head of it sat like Cicero—but he had none of Cicero's genius in his soul!—a man moody of countenance and portly of person: he was called the Umpire, and they said he was chosen because of his birthplace being America. Some had gone ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... view. What I wanted was, to get outside of the city, among the hills, where I could see the old woods, the streams, the mountains, and get a breath of fresh air, such as I used to breathe. I wanted to be free and comfortable for a month; to lay around loose in a promiscuous way among the hills, where beautiful lakes lay sleeping in their quiet loveliness; where the rivers flow on their everlasting course through primeval forests; where the moose, the deer, the panther and the wolf still range, and where the speckled trout sport in the crystal ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... 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 of it, than the waggon from Madrid arrived on its way to Coruna, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... tall, comely figure of Mr. Soloman, the accommodation man. He did not spring from among the bevy of coat-takers, and hood-retainers, at the extreme end of the great hall, nor from among the heap of promiscuous garments piled in one corner; and yet he is here, looking as if some magic process had brought him from a mysterious labyrinth. "Couldn't get along without me, you see. It's an ambition with me to befriend everybody. If I can do a bit of a good turn for a friend, so much the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... 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 officers to act in unison, and the unhappy ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr

... they feel the wound. Embru'd in gore, they bleed from ev'ry part, And deep wounds rankle at Britannia's heart. O fatal conquest! Speak thou crimson'd plain, Now press'd beneath the weight of hundreds slain! There heaps of British youth promiscuous lie, Here, murder'd FREEMEN catch the wand'ring eye. Observe yon stripling bath'd in purple gore, He bleeds for FREEDOM on his native shore. His livid eyes in drear convulsions roll, While from his wounds escapes the ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge

... must be formed like an inclined plane, beginning at the footlights, and rising towards the background, and covered with green bocking. The soldiers should be grouped about the ground in various positions, and the cannon and guns scattered about in a promiscuous manner. The two ladies in mourning sit on the top of the breastwork, side by side, their heads bowed down, and hands covering their faces. The mother is seated at the other end of the breastwork, head thrown back, and eyes closed. The ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... forbidding the promiscuous carrying of firearms met with decided opposition. There was an element of danger, it was true, but to deprive any of the boys of arms on what promised an exciting day's sport was contrary to their creed and occupation; besides, ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... arranged in the form of a crescent, enclosing within its boundaries a promiscuous mass of soldiers and camp-followers, camels, and baggage-wagons, which seemed to extend as far as the eye could reach. In the centre was the gorgeous tent of the vizier, made of green silk, and splendid with its embroidery of gold, silver, and precious stones, while inside ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... barricadin' the house and shootin' promiscuous at me from the windows? Not on your life. I know what I'm about. This thing has got to be done quiet. There's no use stirring up a dirty scandal to hurt his reputation for honest dealin' in New York. Even as it is, the story has got around about the mystery of Black ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... gold-fish." It was at this stage in its history, when its surroundings were more rural than it is possible to imagine to-day, that the tavern was depicted by Hogarth in his "March to Finchley" plate. Early in the last century, however, it "became a place of more promiscuous resort, and persons of the worst character and description were in the constant habit of frequenting it; highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, and common women formed its leading visitants, and it became so great a nuisance to the neighbourhood, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... will be ample, thank you," Violet returned, secretly thinking it a very generous offer, while she began to realize that she was also very fortunate in securing so pleasant a home and such a remunerative position, instead of having to trust to promiscuous pupils for ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... body had Margharita and a beautiful great voice; but her long-delayed soul was the size of a small island and one family. Funny notion of a soul! A hen might have it. No, not a hen—she is a light-minded promiscuous creature; but a stork, let us say; she is monogamous and quite bound up in her family. No—not a stork either—storks migrate; no island would satisfy her. Apparently it takes a human creature to be proud of ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... the Negro has sufficient moral vitality left to cut his way through the whirlpool of licentiousness to the solid rock of Christian character. From the harem life of promiscuous and unnameable sins of slavery, some of which were the natural and fatal growth of pagan vices, others the fruit of prostitution, to the making of one clean, beautiful, noble and divine family and home, covers ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... distinct things. For the one I have made as a parent or common ancestor to all knowledge; and the other I have now brought in as a branch or descendant of natural science. It appeareth likewise that I have assigned to summary philosophy the common principles and axioms which are promiscuous and indifferent to several sciences; I have assigned unto it likewise the inquiry touching the operation or the relative and adventive characters of essences, as quantity, similitude, diversity, possibility, and the rest, with this distinction and provision; that they be handled as ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... humanity of the present age with the barbarism of antiquity, great stress has been laid on the savage custom of exposing the children whom their parents could not maintain; whilst the man of sensibility, who thus, perhaps, complains, by his promiscuous amours produces a most destructive barrenness and contagious flagitiousness of manners. Surely nature never intended that women, by satisfying an appetite, should frustrate the very purpose ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... understood that people were sensible of it, and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up so as not to come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in promiscuous company to come into their houses or near them; at least not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or of any smell from them; and when they were obliged to converse at a distance with strangers, they would always have preservatives ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... 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

... heard the sound of the great saw singing its song of industry; I saw the teamsters hauling away great loads of lumber. The only difference between the apparently useless old lumber and scrap iron, piled together in promiscuous confusion, machinery thrown into a heap without the arrangement, and the new building with its powerful engine working smoothly and swiftly for the comfort and wealth of men, was that before the rebuilding, the wheels, the saw, the shafting, boilers, piston-rod, and fly wheel had no definite ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... nature,—ever prone to be more impressed by a disappointment of its own momentary gratification than by the most obvious well-being of a nation but, glad or sorry, of Fort Edward was not left one stone upon another. Several single stones lay about, promiscuous rather than belligerent. Flag-staff and palisades lived only in a few straggling bean-poles. For the heavy booming of cannon rose the "quauk!" of ducks and the cackling of hens. We went to the spot which tradition ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... and the right to reproduce his kind are certainly such. Yet human societies impose upon their members restrictions in the exercise of both these rights. A starving man is prohibited from taking food which belongs to somebody else. Promiscuous reproduction is restricted by various laws or customs. It is admitted that society is justified in restricting these elementary rights, because without such restrictions an ordered society could not exist. If ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury

... the banks of the Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and extensive country, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was delivered to the barbarians, who drove before them, in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars."—Ibid., ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... 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 baby in her bedraggled lap, had ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... Sage looked calmly up, and with his awful book At those two Bachelors' bald heads a certain aim he took; And over crag and precipice they rolled promiscuous down,— At once they rolled, and never stopped in lane or field or town; And when they reached their house, they found (besides their want of Stuffin') The Mouse had fled—and previously had ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... 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 people ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... 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 ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... opened the door that changes were on foot. Our studio sitting-room was dismantled of many of its treasures. Allan, with his coat off and a pipe in his mouth, was throwing odds and ends in a promiscuous sort of way into a huge trunk which stood open upon the floor. Arthur, a few yards off, was rolling ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... courtesy of a certain Englishman who had raised and lowered her window not once but perhaps twenty times. And then her gaze fell upon the skirt of her dress, which was a costume most appropriate for the Quai but much too delicate for a promiscuous stroll through the ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... these as are not at home in the immediate neighbourhood sit down to the table. The party is further augmented by the skipper and his assistants, the wharf-keepers, one or two residents in the hotel, and the host and hostess with their family. Quite a large company altogether, and of very promiscuous elements. The only persons not entirely at their ease are Dobbs and his wife. They find themselves dining with the "quality," as they would have said at home, and have not yet learnt that that word is written "equality" in this part of ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... 13). The fourth century is of course the period of plebeian advance in all departments, and ends with the opening of the priesthoods to the plebs by the lex Ogulnia, and the publication of the Fasti. Plebeian too, I suspect, was the keeping open house and promiscuous hospitality which is recorded by Livy of the first lectisternia; this was the practice of the plebs on the Cerealia (April 19), and was perhaps an old custom connected with the supply of corn and the temple of Ceres (see above, p. 255). ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... in lodgings in New York, as in other large cities, is the incomparable solitude attainable in that blessed state of deliverance from promiscuous "board." One may dwell for a twelvemonth in lodgings for single gentlemen, without incurring the obligation of knowing by sight, or even by name, the lodger who occupies the very room opposite to his, on the same landing. Fifty lodgers may have successively ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... to render the night joyful to the victors; whilst the Britons, wandering and forlorn, amid the promiscuous lamentations of men and women, were dragging along the wounded; calling out to the unhurt; abandoning their habitations, and in the rage of despair setting them on fire; choosing places of concealment, and then deserting them; consulting together, and then separating. Sometimes, on beholding ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... 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, and bags, a wretched pile of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... sense ever loved a Tiptoe. So they continue at home until the house is broken up; and then they retire in a galaxy to some provincial Belle Vue-terrace or Prospect-place; where they endeavour to forestall the bachelors with promiscuous orange-blossoms and maidenly susceptibilities. We have characterised these heart-burning efforts after "station," as originating with, and maintained by, the female branches of the family; and they are so—but, nevertheless, their influence on the young men ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... of promiscuous amoristic monogamy, is fatal to large States because it puts its ban on the deliberate breeding of man as a ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw

... in private homes families have so much to keep them busy, in these promiscuous and multitudinous residences there are so many who have nothing to do, and that always makes mischief. They gather in each other's rooms and spend hours in consultation about others. If they had to walk a half mile before they got to the willing ear of some listener to detraction they would get ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... 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 ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett

... 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, a'n't he a beauty? fall down and worship him'. 'Hold,' said I, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... inflammation. There you have it in a nutshell. The mucous membrane of the larynx and 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

... promiscuous and indecent splashing down of dead people in so many wells, is bad. It surrounds Death with revolting associations, that insensibly become connected with those whom Death is approaching. Indifference and avoidance are the natural ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... too, that here in the East the beauty of woman is more transcendent, and the forms of the men cast in a finer mould. Every variety of complexion is here also to be seen, from the jet black of the slender Ethiopian, to the more than white of the women of the Danube. Here I saw before me, in one promiscuous throng, arrayed in their national dresses, Persians, dark-skinned Indians, swarthy Egyptians, the languishing, soft-eyed Syrian, nymphs from the borders of the Caspian, women of the Jews from the shores of the Mediterranean, Greeks from Asia ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... a great part of the Jewish nation were then assembled, and to which others had fled for refuge, being driven by the terror of his arms like chaff before the whirlwind. Here they appeared! Husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, (one promiscuous throng) were gazing in breathless solicitude, while consternation and dismay were depicted in every countenance, and fearful expectation pervaded every bosom! Death, a long lingering death, was gathering around ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... generally reported to adore the pudendum muliebre, and to mix on certain days of the year in promiscuous debauchery. When they go to Hamah they pray in the mosque, which they never do at Kalaat Maszyad. This castle has been from ancient times their chief seat. One of them asserted that his religion descended from Ismayl, the son of Abraham, and that the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... 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 ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... were absorbing my mind, As I sat on the sofa, or partly reclined, While promiscuous edibles recently 'bolted,' In assiduous dancing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and preserved no kind of majesty. Hating business and fatigue, he displayed in such matters as he took in hand a want of prudence and of judgment. His desire for glory sprang rather from impulse than from reason. His liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, promiscuous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it was more often an ill-founded obstinacy than firmness, and that which many people called his goodness of nature rather deserved the name of coldness and feebleness of spirit.' This is Guicciardini's portrait. De Comines is more ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Mr. Deedy who had let the thing down so dreadfully: he was never mentioned in the office now save in connexion with that misdemeanour. Young as I was I had been in a manner taken over from Mr. Deedy, who had been owner as well as editor; forming part of a promiscuous lot, mainly plant and office- furniture, which poor Mrs. Deedy, in her bereavement and depression, parted with at a rough valuation. I could account for my continuity but on the supposition that I had been cheap. I rather resented the practice ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... no uncommon occurrence, in visiting cities or towns, to speak at two, three, and four meetings a day; sometimes to promiscuous audiences composed of everybody who would care ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... of the Colony now comes on the scene. It was time he came. The Islands were neither to fall into the hands of the French nor remain the happy hunting-ground of promiscuous adventurers. But the fate which ordained that Edward Gibbon Wakefield should save them from these alternatives interposed in the way of the great colonizer a series of difficulties from which any mind less untiring ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... exploit. He admired chivalry, then in its last days, and he painted it with the passion of an idealizer. His father had been an heraldic painter, so it was perhaps an hereditary strain in the son that naturally attached him to rank and royalty. The people—that is, the promiscuous mass of mankind—hardly exist to Froissart. His pages, spacious as they are, have scarcely room for more than kings and nobles, and knights and squires. He is a picturesque and romantic historian, in whose chronicles the glories of the world of chivalry—a world, as we ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in every thing. With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the room, and now in peering through the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... this manner some eighty or ninety vehicles were gotten together, with teams, and as many loads of ordnance stores were saved for the army. He issued orders that the citizens should be permitted to help themselves to the remaining stores, and a promiscuous scramble for clothing, blankets, meat, meal, and all sorts of quartermaster and commissary stores, commenced and lasted three days. Occasionally, a half-drunken, straggling soldier, would walk into the midst of the snatchers, with gun on shoulder and pistol at his belt, and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... the happy chance, at the time the question came up, that she had retained, on the subject of promiscuous colleges, the mistrust of the age of crinoline: as to which in fact that little old photograph, with its balloon petticoat and its astonishingly flat, stiff "torso," might have imaged some failure of the attempt to blow the heresy into her. The true ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... in the very middle of his laces and his brandy and his silk—I takes him, sir, in the very act of illegality, red-handed, so to speak, and then, if he shows fight, or if he runs away, then I shoots, sir, and then if I hits, why it's a good job too—but none of this promiscuous work for Augustus Hobson. Slow and sure, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... before their many ride. The Athenian monarch mounts his throne on high, And after him the queen and Emily: Next these, the kindred of the crown are graced With nearer seats, and lords by ladies placed. Scarce were they seated, when with clamours loud 550 In rush'd at once a rude promiscuous crowd; The guards, and then each other overbear, And in a moment throng the spacious theatre. Now changed the jarring noise to whispers low, As winds forsaking seas more softly blow; When at the western gate, on which the car Is placed ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... empire at an enormous expense. The wildernesses of Northern Europe furnished bears and wolves; Africa contributed lions, crocodiles, and leopards; Asia elephants and tigers. These creatures were pitted against one another in every conceivable way. Often a promiscuous multitude would be turned loose in the arena at once. But even the terrific scene that then ensued, became at last too tame to stir the blood of the Roman populace. Hence a new species of show was introduced, and grew rapidly into favor with the spectators of the amphitheatre. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... this whole doctrine of society is, that we are to try the value of all modes and forms of social entertainment by their effect in producing real acquaintance and real friendship and good-will. The first and rudest form of seeking this is by a great promiscuous party, which simply effects this,—that people at least see each other on the outside, and eat together. Next come all those various forms of reunion in which the entertainment consists of something higher than staring and eating,—some exercise of the faculties ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... love, of softness and sweetness and smarminess and intimacy and promiscuous kindness and all that sort of thing. We think it's so awfully nice of us to be like that, in ourselves. But in our wives or our husbands it gets on our nerves horribly. Yet we think it oughtn't to, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... while. I could have had a guard, of course. But you can't expect decent snipe-shooting when there's a lot of promiscuous firing going on in the district. The snipe is a peculiarly nervous bird, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various

... come along with me to the Diamond Dot," sez I. "Things are goin' to happen promiscuous up there after a bit, an' you don't want to miss it. Never mind about the reward. I'm goin' to handle this affair just as if the' wasn't such a thing on earth as ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... 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

... secure so far from poor Tippet's catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and what did I find? This—which I copy from the book now—'If we love in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to eternity'—from 'Promiscuous Exercises,' to be translated ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... latter points the Boule d'Or at Bourges was full of instruction; boasting as it did of a hall of reception in which, amid old boots that had been brought to be cleaned, old linen that was being sorted for the wash, and lamps of evil odour that were awaiting replenishment, a strange, familiar, promiscuous household life went forward. Small scullions in white caps and aprons slept upon greasy benches; the Boots sat staring at you while you fumbled, helpless, in a row of pigeon-holes, for your candlestick or your key; and, amid the coming and going of the commis-voyageurs, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... authority was notable for an attempt to unite the Greek and Roman churches—a union which was dissolved in 1283—and his instigation of the revolt in Sicily, which ended in the famous Sicilian Vespers (March 30, 1282), when 8,000 French were exterminated in a promiscuous massacre. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... on but one thing at a time. Therefore, the mind that is filled with various kinds of thoughts can prosecute none of them successfully. We must learn to select the guests that we would have sit at our intellectual banquets, summon or exclude them at will, and never permit the intrusion of a promiscuous crowd. When our work is arranged for the day, the week, the month, the year, we should set apart the time to be devoted to each item, both in work and in thought; and then never allow the thoughts of one to encroach upon the time allotted to another. We should so ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... epidemic months before it broke out, no sufficient means were adopted by the authorities to fortify the city against its attack. All summer long the street-drains sent up their concentrated stenches and the undrained streets spread far and wide their promiscuous abominations. The general daily disinfection ordered by the city government was never thoroughly enforcedly the police, and as often as a lull occurred in the virulence of the pestilence it was almost totally neglected by the citizens. When the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... Potiphar's wife and Catherine of Russia, without any of the good nature and "gentlemanliness" of the last named. The real Guinevere, the Guinevere of the Vulgate and partly of Malory, is freed from the colourlessness and the discreditable end of Geoffrey's queen, transforms the promiscuous and rather louche Melvas incident into an important episode of her epic or romantic existence, and gives the lie, even in her least creditable or least charming moments, to the Launfal libel. As before in Lancelot's case, details of her presentation had in some cases ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... know the clerk at the Synthetic Jewelry Company had it made up for her. She's cheap, I tell you. Promiscuous. Who ever heard of anybody standing back of her? She knocks around. She sells her old clothes to Tessie, my manicurist. I've got a line on ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... the attitude of a fretful porcupine with a quill pointed in every direction against real or supposititious enemies. In such a state of mental alarm and physical vaporing did he live, that he seems to have proclaimed a promiscuous war against all gainsayers,— that is, the literary world; and for the better assurance to them of his indomitable valor, and to himself of indemnity from disturbance, he adopted a formidable prefix to his name; and to "any bill, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... to the first point, the practisings, I will frankly own, that could you send your young ladies to one where girls only are admitted, I should more readily yield my opinion of the matter to those Christians who have advised you to it. But as I learn that it is a promiscuous dance of boys and girls, I must in conscience say that I look upon such a meeting to be as pernicious in its effects upon the minds of young people, as balls and public assemblies on persons of riper years. When you mentioned the subject to me first, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... 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 ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... savage coast. The wild appearance of land entirely untouched by cultivation, the close and perplexed growing of trees, interrupted now and then by barren spots, bare rocks, or spaces overgrown with weeds, flowers, flowering shrubs, or underwood, scattered and intermingled in the most promiscuous manner, are the first objects that present themselves; afterwards, the irregular placing of the first tents which are pitched, or huts which are erected for immediate accommodation, wherever chance presents a spot ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip



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



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