Dictionary

mixed company en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (uncountable) Men and women, both present at a gathering.
   • "Imagine my one attempt at rational conversation last night. Asking his views on female emigration . . . ." "Perhaps the bearings of the question would hardly suit mixed company." 1880, Charlotte M. Yonge, chapter 5, in Clever Woman of the Family:
   • "Took 'er home all right, did yuh?" he leered, as if they two were in possession of a huge joke of the kind which may not be told in mixed company. 1908, B. M. Bower, chapter 3, in The Long Shadow:
   • Only a Cancer female can describe in mixed company a night spent with a lover and a double-sided dildo without a sniff of shame or irony. 2004, Stella Starsky, Quinn Cox, Sextrology: The Astrology of Sex and the Sexes, page 189:
   • "Fifteen or 20 years ago, you couldn't even mention the word prostate in polite mixed company." 2001 June 24, Leon Jaroff, “The Man's Cancer”, in Time:
   • Travel is enlivened not only by the mixed company of French, Berbers, Arabs, and descendants of the Mediterranean-Corsairs who sit together indiscriminately, but also by itinerant vendors of macaroons, sweetmeats and the like, who, as long as they have a travel ticket, ply their wares unhindered by the [ticket] collectors. 1950 May, “A Tunisian Electric Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 335: