miscellaneousness

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mis·cel·la·ne·ous

(mĭs′ə-lā′nē-əs)

adj.

1. Consisting of various kinds; varied: a shelf containing miscellaneous objects.

2. Having a variety of characteristics or aspects: a website providing miscellaneous information.

[From Latin miscellāneus, from miscellus, mixed, from miscēre, to mix; see meik- in Indo-European roots.]

mis′cel·la′ne·ous·ly adv.

mis′cel·la′ne·ous·ness n.

Synonyms: miscellaneous, heterogeneous, mixed, varied, assorted
These adjectives mean consisting of a number of different kinds. Miscellaneous implies a varied, often haphazard combination: is selling postcards and miscellaneous novelties. Heterogeneous emphasizes diversity and dissimilarity: a heterogeneous urban population. Mixed suggests a combination of differing but not necessarily conflicting elements: a mixed program of baroque and contemporary music. Varied stresses absence of uniformity: "The assembly was large and varied, containing clergy and laity, men and women" (Nicholas P.S. Wiseman).
Assorted often suggests the purposeful arrangement of different but complementary elements: a pretty arrangement of assorted flowers.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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miscellaneousness

noun

The quality of being made of many different elements, forms, kinds, or individuals:

diverseness, diversification, diversity, heterogeneity, heterogeneousness, multifariousness, multiformity, multiplicity, variegation, variety, variousness.

Biology: polymorphism.

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References in classic literature ?

Casaubon as to the unsound opinions of Middleton concerning the relations of Judaism and Catholicism; and passed easily to a half-enthusiastic half-playful picture of the enjoyment he got out of the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the mind flexible with constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world's ages as a set of box-like partitions without vital connection.

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These include the gulf between the tidy categorizations of the "Yiwen zhi" and the miscellaneousness of numerous manuscript finds, which tend to mix and match texts and ideas traditionally associated with particular schools of thought; the preponderance of technical, administrative, mantic, and occult writings in the manuscripts, genres which are both underrepresented and de-emphasized within the "Yiwen zhi"; (32) and the sheer numbers of excavated manuscripts not listed in the bibliography.

The "Yiwen zhi" [phrase omitted] (Treatise on Arts and Letters) Bibliography in Its Own Context

This fits with the dates of the other items which since at least the time of the Puttick & Simpson sale in 1874 have lain next to the Rochester copies in Harbin's papers, and, given their miscellaneousness, it is hard to see why Sir Alexander Malet himself would have brought these items together.