# promiscuous

Pronunciation: say "pruh-MIS-kyoo-uhs" /pɹəˈmɪs.kju.əs/

## Adjective

1. Having many sexual partners, especially without being selective in choosing them.
   - Simple: Having sex with many different people, especially without caring much who they are.
   - _Researchers were surprised to find that the supposedly faithful birds were quite promiscuous._
   - _He was hurt by the rumor that he had been promiscuous in college._
2. Made or done without careful choice or selection.
   - Simple: Done without thinking carefully about what to choose.
   - _The promiscuous use of antibiotics on farms has helped resistant bacteria spread._
   - _His essays suffer from a promiscuous habit of quoting anyone who agrees with him._
3. Made up of different, unrelated elements mixed together in a disorderly way.
   - Simple: Made of many different things all mixed up together without order.
   - _The attic held a promiscuous heap of old letters, broken toys, and winter coats._
   - _The museum's early collection was promiscuous, with Roman coins displayed beside stuffed birds and seashells._
4. Of a network interface card or its mode, set to capture all network traffic it sees rather than only the traffic addressed to it.
   - Simple: Describes a network card set to collect all the data that reaches it, including data meant for other computers.
   - _To capture every packet on the segment, the analyst put the interface into promiscuous mode._
   - _The security tool raises an alert whenever a laptop's network card switches to promiscuous mode._

## Origin

Latin prō ("forth") and misceō ("mix") combined to make prōmiscuus ("mixed, not separated"), the source of this word.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/promiscuous (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).