stereotype

Borrowed from French stéréotype (adjective),^[1] equivalent to stereo- +‎ type. Printing sense is from 1817, the “conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image” sense is recorded from 1922 in Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion.^[2]

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈstɛ.ɹi.əˌtaɪp/, /ˈstɪə.ɹi.əˌtaɪp/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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  • Audio (Southern England):

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• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈstɛɹ.i.əˌtaɪp/, (Canadian raising) [ˈstɛɹ.i.əˌtʌɪp], /ˈstɪɹ.i.əˌtaɪp/, (Canadian raising) [ˈstɪɹ.i.əˌtʌɪp]

stereotype (countable and uncountable, plural stereotypes)

1. A conventional, formulaic, and often oversimplified or exaggerated conception, opinion, or image of (a person or a group of people).

   Coordinate terms: cliché, platitude, single story

   Not all Zumbetonians wear plimsolls. That's just a stereotype.

   • 2002, Ted C. Lewellen, The Anthropology of Globalization, page 178:

     Anthropologists studying aid agencies have found that stereotypes and deindividualization are endemic among those in refugee work. It may be inevitable that large assistance organizations tend to objectify, simplify, and universalize the people under their care.

   • 2010, Nicholas Collins, Nick Collins, Introduction to Computer Music‎^[1]:

     So, although to some observers machine music implies a harsh metronomicity – and some sectors of electronic dance music might be the stereotype here – computers can also be the means of investigating human expression.

   • 2016 June 1, Carina Storrs, “Therapists often discriminate against black and poor patients, study finds”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     “Psychotherapists are not immune to the same stereotypes that we all have, and I think they could become even more relevant for psychotherapists than for other professions [both medical and nonmedical], because they are embarking on this intimate, potentially long-term relationship with these [clients],” said Heather Kugelmass, a doctoral student in sociology at Princeton University. Kugelmass is the author of the study (PDF), which was published Wednesday in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

   • 2019 December 18, @WYKLOisREAL, Twitter‎^[3], archived from the original on 22 March 2022:

     Heartwarming: Trans girl breaks stereotypes by being the worst on the girls swim team

   • 2024 July 1, Kim Davis, “How to avoid the ‘stupid American’ stereotype while traveling abroad”, in CNN‎^[4]:

     So, here are my top 10 tips on how you can avoid the “stupid American” stereotype and become a “Smart American” abroad.

2. (psychology) A person who is regarded as embodying or conforming to a set image or type.
4. (printing) A metal printing plate cast from a matrix moulded from a raised printing surface.

   Synonym: cliché

5. (software engineering) An extensibility mechanism of the Unified Modeling Language, allowing a new element to be derived from an existing one with added specializations.

• metastereotype
• stereotype tax
• stereotype threat
• stereotypic
• stereotypical

• stereotypy, stereotypography

stereotype (third-person singular simple present stereotypes, present participle stereotyping, simple past and past participle stereotyped)

1. (transitive) To make a stereotype of someone or something, or characterize someone by a stereotype.
   • 1957, Karl Popper, chapter 24, in The Poverty of Historicism, FIRST HARPER TORCH BOOK edition, page 90:

     Unable to ascertain what is in the minds of so many individuals, he must try to simplify his problems by eliminating individual differences: he must try to control and stereotype interests and beliefs by education and propaganda.

   • 1990, Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, “Preface”, in Wines in the Wilderness: Plays by African American Women from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, New York, N.Y.: Praeger Publishers, →ISBN, page xiv:

     The heroines of these plays speak out against intraracial biases, stereotyping, lynchmobs, illiteracy, poverty, promiscuity, self-righteousness, verbally abusive men, rape, and miscegenation. […] Without warning the doctor, she chokes the life out of her child in order to keep him safe from white lynchmobs.

   • 2018, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature:

     Saint Teresa, paradoxical as such a judgment may sound, was a typical shrew, in this sense of the term. […] Her voluble egotism; her sense, not of radical bad being, as the really contrite have it, but of her 'faults' and 'imperfections' in the plural; her stereotyped humility and return upon herself, as covered with 'confusion' at each new manifestation of God's singular partiality for a person so unworthy, are typical of shrewdom: a paramountly feeling nature would be objectively lost in gratitude, and silent.

2. (transitive, printing) To prepare for printing in stereotype; to produce stereotype plates of.

   to stereotype the Bible

3. (transitive, printing) To print from a stereotype.
4. (transitive, figurative) To make firm or permanent; to fix.
   • 1887, George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, Scotland as it was and as it is:

     Powerful causes tending to stereotype and aggravate the poverty of old conditions.

stereotype

1. (literal) Of an edition: printed in stereotype.
   • 1817 December, G. O. P. T., “A Chronological Table, Shewing that All the Remarkable Events Recorded in History Concur at the Distance of Five, or Ten, or Thirty Generations of Men”, in The Gentleman’s Magazine, London: […] Nichols, Son, and Bentley, […], →OCLC, footnote *, page 500:

     At the present Epoch (1800), the art of Printing is become rather retrograde; or we should not hear so much of Stereotype editions. Surely the use and very principle of the invention of Printing, is to have the types moveable!

   • 1820, J[ohn] M[ilner], “The Catholic Bible Society”, in Supplementary Memoirs of English Catholics, Addressed to Charles Butler, Esq. […], London: […] Keating and Brown, […] sold also by Murray, […], →OCLC, page 243:

     Yet the whole of this mighty preparation ended in the production of a small stereotype edition of the New Testament, without the usual distinction of verses, and nearly without notes.

   • 1827 June 21, Philadelphia Recorder, quotee, “[Thomas] Scott’s Family Bible, Boston Stereotype Edition, […]”, in Litchfield County Post, volume II, number 1 (53 overall), Litchfield, Conn., →ISSN, →OCLC, page [3], column 5:

     The first edition of this work, (the constant and increasing sale of which proves the high esteem in which it is deservedly held), begun in 1788, and published in London, in numbers, consisted of 5,000 copies; the second in 1805, of 2,000; the third in 1810, of 2,000; the fourth in 1812, of 3,000; and the new edition is stereotype, the largest work ever submitted to that process.

2. (figurative, now somewhat rare) Synonym of stereotyped.
   • 1824 (indicated as 1823 December 1), Peregrine Persic [pseudonym; James Justinian Morier], “Introductory Epistle, to the Rev. Dr. Fundgruben, […]”, in The Adventures of Hajji Baba, of Ispahan. […], volume I, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page xi:

     It is an ingenious expression which I owe to you, sir, that the manners of the East are as it were stereotype. Ahhough I do not conceive that they are quite so strongly marked, yet, to make my idea understood, I would say that they are like the last impressions taken from a copper-plate engraving, where the whole of the subject to be represented is made out, although parts of it from much use have been obliterated.

   • 1837, Thomas Carlyle, “Sword in Hand”, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume II (The Constitution), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, book III (The Tuileries), page 116:

     Cartels by the hundred: which he, since the Constitution must be made first, and his time is precious, answers now always with a kind of stereotype formula: ‘Monsieur, you are put upon my List; but I warn you that it is long, and I grant no preferences.’

   • 1899 May, Alfred Gudeman, “[Henry] Furneaux’s Agricola of Tacitus”, in The Classical Review, volume XIII, number CXIV, London: David Nutt, […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 216, columns 1–2:

     This wonderful passage, with its piercing tenderness and solemn eloquence, is—one shrinks from saying it—a veritable mosaic of stereotype ideas, characteristic of this particular kind of ‘epilogus,’ or [‘]consolatio,’ as a few illustrations out of many will show.

   • 1990, Ingegerd Lindblad, “Two Standing Tomb-statuettes from the New Kingdom”, in Eva Rystedt, editor, Bulletin, volume 25, Stockholm: Medelhavsmuseet, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3, column 2:

     The posture of the body is very straight with the preserved arm hanging straight down at the side. The body is of the well-known athletic type, that, by no means, is stereotype in its proportions. In the Old Kingdom for example, the shoulders are straighter and normally so broad that the arms hanging down do not even touch the body.

• Often undistinguishable from the attributive use of the noun.^[1]

From French stéréotype.

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stereotype n (plural stereotypes or stereotypen, diminutive stereotypetje n)

1. stereotype

stereotype

1. definite natural masculine singular of stereotyp