overgeneralization

plural overgeneralizations

1. uncountableusuallyThe act of overgeneralizing.

   "George Orwell put the easy use of words like 'unique' under the headings of 'pretentious diction' and overgeneralization.

   1995 July 7, Gary Houston, “Everything's Unique”, in Chicago Reader

   1 more example

   Fortunately for all of us, the rhetoric of both cultural pessimism and postmodernism contains more than its fair share of exaggeration and overgeneralization.

   1988 November 11, Andrew Goodwin, “Reading: The Cultural Crash of '89”, in Chicago Reader

2. countableAn instance of overgeneralizing.

   It's an overgeneralization to say that everywhere you look is the hand of man in the presettlement era," says Thomas Swetnam, a fire ecologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

   2000 January 28, Keith Kloor, “RESTORATION ECOLOGY:Returning America's Forests to Their 'Natural' Roots”, in Science, volume 287, number 5453, →DOI, pages 573–575