stereotype

plural stereotypes

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

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

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   Instead we notice a trait which marks a well known type, and fill in the rest of the picture by means of the stereotypes we carry about in our heads.

   1922, Walter Lippmann, chapter VI, in Public Opinion

   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.

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

   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.

   2010, Nicholas Collins, Nick Collins, Introduction to Computer Music

   “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.

   2016 June 1, Carina Storrs, “Therapists often discriminate against black and poor patients, study finds”, in CNN

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

   2019 December 18, @WYKLOisREAL, Twitter, archived from the original on 22 Mar 2022

2. countableuncountablehuman sciencesA person who is regarded as embodying or conforming to a set image or type.
3. countableuncountablemediaA metal printing plate cast from a matrix moulded from a raised printing surface.

   Synonyms: cliché

4. countableuncountablecomputingAn extensibility mechanism of the Unified Modeling Language, allowing a new element to be derived from an existing one with added specializations.

present singular third person stereotypes · participle present stereotyping · participle past stereotyped · past stereotyped

1. transitiveTo make a stereotype of someone or something, or characterize someone by a stereotype.

   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.

   1957, Karl Popper, chapter 24, in The Poverty of Historicism, FIRST HARPER TORCH BOOK edition, page 90

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   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.

   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

   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.

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

2. transitivemediaTo prepare for printing in stereotype; to produce stereotype plates of.

   to stereotype the Bible

3. transitivemediaTo print from a stereotype.
4. figurativelytransitiveTo make firm or permanent; to fix.

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

   1887, George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, Scotland as it was and as it is

1. literalOf an edition: printed in stereotype.

   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.

   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

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   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!

   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

   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.

   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

2. figurativelyrareSynonym of stereotyped.

   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.’

   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

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   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.

   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

   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.

   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

   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.

   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

   Synonyms: stereotyped