Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Made up of a variety of parts or ingredients.
- adj. Having a variety of characteristics, abilities, or appearances.
- adj. Concerned with diverse subjects or aspects.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Consisting of a mixture; diversified; promiscuous: as, miscellaneous reading; a miscellaneous rabble.
- Producing things of various sorts: as, a miscellaneous inventor.
- Synonyms See promiscuous.
Wiktionary
- adj. Consisting of a variety of ingredients or parts.
- adj. Having diverse characteristics, abilities or appearances.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Mixed; mingled; consisting of several things; of diverse sorts; promiscuous; heterogeneous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds
- adj. having many aspects
Etymologies
- From Latin miscellāneus, from miscellus ("mixed"), from misceō ("mix"). (Wiktionary)
- From Latin miscellāneus, from miscellus, mixed, from miscēre, to mix. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Captain Winstanley had set his face against what he called miscellaneous charity.”
“The word "miscellaneous" comes from the Latin verb miscere, meaning "to mix", and if you mix up the letters of "miscellaneous" you get”
“The remainder of the evening was spent by Stephen in miscellaneous cross-examination of Mrs Bunch and in efforts to extract a tune from the hurdy-gurdy.”
Lost Hearts by M. R. James | Solar Flare: Science Fiction News
“[146] Johnson's observations on Addison's writings may be well applied to those of Cicero, who would have been eminently successful in short miscellaneous essays, like those of the Spectator, had the manners of the age allowed it.”
“If you have a general idea of where your miscellaneous spending goes — shampoo and postage stamps that you don’t bother to track, for example — then maybe "miscellaneous" is good enough for you.”
“Even if there’s another 5 billion needed in miscellaneous expenses associated with this paradigm-breaking suggestion, it still only amounts to the cost of the levee re-building.”
“For a frog like me, the most difficult one to pronoune in English: miscellaneous.”
“We achieved some kind of a low, but what I would consider a high in terms of all of the late trains that we experienced during the quarter," Oversier said. "48 percent of them, so nearly half of them were attributed to what we call miscellaneous events.”
“It might be set down as an axiomatic statement that no large publishing house in this country could possibly live exclusively from what are known as miscellaneous books, by which is meant current fiction and other ephemeral publications.”
“(Why he should not have headed it "Scheme," the editor of the _Church Times_, who calls his miscellaneous notes "_Varia_," is better able to say than I.)”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘miscellaneous’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of...
amalgam, medley, conglomerate, pastiche, mishmash, motley, miscellaneous, various, sundry, congeries, potpourri, omnifarious and 5 more...
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Sophaloaf's list
Favorites!
belle, starfish, photography, buddha, dinosaur, floccinaucinihili..., hypoallergenic, sailor, gorgeous, adhesive, imagination, artichokes and 55 more...
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ChortleGiggleSnort
Significant Words- Guiding you on your path to Snazzibility
flimsy, feeble, ranting, ramble, narky, snazzy, yoghurt, bulbous, pustule, globulous, geranium, megalomaniac and 521 more...
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kat's words
ecumenical, cacophony, clatter, marimba, bamboo, saffron, slice, mercurial, pomegranate, cranky, slipshod, scritch and 511 more...
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Favorites
machiavellian, mercurial, deus ex machina, synecdoche, litotes, phallic, freudian, metonymy, chrestomathy, falsifiable, gestalt, truthiness and 211 more...
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Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
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cloudjuice's Words
schadenfreude, sordid, promulgate, erratic, erroneous, amalgamate, sesquipedalian, incongruous, psychosis, etymology, simulacrum, serendipity and 988 more...
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pcofdirt's Words
besmirched, befuddled, ai, sanguineous, antidisestablishm..., ablation, ascertain, ascerbic, aardvark, begot, benign, buggery and 118 more...
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words I like for one reason or another
nostalgia, corgi, ambiguous, anachronistic, bamboozled, eloquent, emporium, sacrosanct, nascent, obfuscate, miscellaneous, kaleidoscopic and 113 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 1991 more...
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Amusing words
interesting words
bonce, furcate, tapioca, tillage, desalinate, garish, litmus, roadhog, azoic, haberdasher, imbroglio, polliwog and 802 more...
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They Roll Off The Tongue
Words that are just fun to say. Entirely subjective, but I like 'em regardless. A complement to the list They Stumble Off The Tongue.
verisimilitude, parsimonious, soliloquy, insipid, ontological, plentifully, je ne sais quoi, misanthropic, bourgeoisie, parallelable, inclemency, frigidity and 159 more...
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ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
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cucchiaio's Words
ambidextrous, octogenarian, unanimous, semaphore, luminous, indigenous, epistemological, ravenous, receptacle, petrify, rectify, lepidopterologist and 104 more...
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bianxie's list
cruel, asphyxiate, merciless, mercy, masochism, sadism, osculate, loquacious, vehement, pinnacle, rough, macabre and 77 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for miscellaneous.
kamtsatka I just hate it when I can't type this right. Every time I need the word I have to use a dictionary. Oct 17, 2008
frindley Never, but never, have a file called "Miscellaneous".
This principle was taught to me by a New England Patriots fan who also managed to bring me ’round to the idea that gridiron isn't necessarily the silliest game in the world. Apr 10, 2008