A heterogeneous compound, mixture, or other such object is one that consists of many different items, which are often not easily sorted or separated, though they are clearly distinct.

Heterogeneous is the antonym of homogeneous, which means that the object consists of many identical items.

It is often used in a scientific or mathematical context.

Examples

• A heterogeneous mixture is a mixture of two or more than two compounds where each and every compound is visible (d.s).

• In the world of enterprise computing, heterogeneous data is a mix of data from two or more sources, often of two or more formats, e.g., SQL and XML.

See also

• amorphous
• heterozygous
• homogenization
• homozygous