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Prurient vs Promiscuous - What's the difference?

prurient | promiscuous |

As adjectives the difference between prurient and promiscuous

is that prurient is uneasy with desire; itching; especially, having a lascivious anxiety or propensity; lustful while promiscuous is made up of various disparate elements mixed together; of disorderly composition.

prurient

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Uneasy with desire; itching; especially, having a lascivious anxiety or propensity; lustful.
  • * 1823 , The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, Etc , page 781,
  • We know that at that period certain indecencies in the dresses, even of those who were considered as the most refined and polished men of the age, were not only tolerated but ostentatiously displayed, and every sort of device that the most prurient mind could think of was had recourse to, to attract attention or excite a smile.
  • * 1995 , Brian Parkinson, Ideas and Realities of Emotion , page 124,
  • For example, some of the more prudish senders may have averted their attention from the sexual pictures while other more prurient viewers may have intensified their gaze.
  • * 2010 , Stephen Sartarelli (translator), Love and the Erotic in Art'', (2008, Stefano Zuffi, ''Amore ed erotismo ), John Paul Getty Trust, US, page 7,
  • It must be removed at once, lest it disturb the young and arouse in adults the most prurient thoughts.
  • Arousing or appealing to sexual desire.
  • * 1825 , The Literary Chronicle for the Year 1825 , London, page 156,
  • nor is it more prurient or lascivious than many productions to be found in a circulating library.
  • * 2005 , Donald Gilbert-Santamaría, Writers on the Market: Consuming Literature in Early Seventeenth-century Spain , page 130,
  • Much of my discussion in the previous two chapters has focused on the dichotomy in Alemán's novel between the author's stated interest in moral didacticism and the more prurient appeal of the novel's representations of material privation and violent spectacle.
  • * 2008 , Marcel Danesi, Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives , page 204,
  • But in contemporary consumerist societies, when the kids are safely in bed, television programs allow viewers to indulge their more prurient interests.
  • Curious, especially inappropriately so.
  • Synonyms

    * (uneasy with desire) lustful * (sexually arousing or appealing) titillating

    Derived terms

    * prurient interest

    promiscuous

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Made up of various disparate elements mixed together; of disorderly composition.
  • * 1667 , , Book 1, ll. 379-80
  • Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, / While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof.
  • *
  • they had both been educated 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 their orphaned condition.
  • Made without careful choice; indiscriminate.
  • indiscriminate in choice of sexual partners.
  • (networking) The mode in which a gathers all network traffic instead of getting only the traffic intended for it.
  • Synonyms

    * See also * See also * (made up of various disparate elements) motley

    Derived terms

    * promiscuity * promiscuousness