stereotype

Pluralstereotypes

Formsstereotypes, stereotyping, stereotyped

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A conventional, oversimplified, and often exaggerated idea or image of a person or group.

   The film leans on a tired stereotype of the suburban housewife.

   Advertisers sometimes reinforce stereotypes rather than challenging them.

   Similarcaricature, generalization

   Note

   The social meaning is surprisingly young. It is recorded from 1922, in Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion, more than a century after printers began using the word for the printing plate. The metaphor is exact: like a cast plate, a stereotype turns out the same image every time. The word is usually countable (a stereotype, stereotypes) and often dismissive, as in "That's just a stereotype."

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To characterize a person or group according to a fixed, oversimplified image.

   Casting directors still stereotype older actors into a narrow range of roles.

   The novel stereotypes its rural characters as simple and backward.

   Similartypecast, pigeonhole, label, caricature, categorize

   Note

   The verb need not take a person as its object. In The Poverty of Historicism (1957), Karl Popper describes a planner who must "control and stereotype interests and beliefs." The -ing form often works as a noun in its own right and is named alongside bias and abuse as a social harm. The past participle stereotyped also serves as an adjective.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   Someone regarded as a living example of a fixed image or type, fitting it almost perfectly.

   His coworker was a walking stereotype of the overworked lawyer.

   Critics dismissed the character as a mere stereotype with no inner depth.

   Similarcaricature, archetype

   Note

   Psychology can point the word at the person rather than the picture. Here it means someone seen as a near-perfect instance of a group, who is judged against the image instead of as an individual. Keep it distinct from the idea itself. That stereotype lives in the observer's head; this one is the person who seems to fit it.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A solid metal printing plate cast from a mold taken from a raised printing surface such as set type.

   The publisher stored each stereotype for later reprints of its popular titles.

   A worn stereotype produced faint, uneven impressions on the page.

   Note

   This was a printer's word first, in use from 1817. A page of composed type was pressed into a papier-mâché or plaster mold, and metal poured into that mold made a single solid plate. The loose type could then be broken up and reused, while the page stayed ready to reprint whenever it was needed. In the trade, the same plate could also be called a cliché.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To prepare a page for printing by casting it into durable stereotype plates.

   The publisher chose to stereotype the textbook before its second printing.

   They stereotyped the entire Bible to meet steady demand.

   Note

   The object of this verb is the whole work, not a single page: you stereotype the Bible or a textbook. That means having every page cast as plates by the process behind the printing plate. It was a bet on the future. A publisher went to the expense for a book expected to sell steadily, so that it could be reprinted on demand.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To produce printed copies from a stereotype plate rather than from standing type.

   Large publishers could stereotype an entire run far faster than they could set it by hand.

   The firm stereotyped its almanacs year after year from the same plates.

   Note

   Here the plates already exist, and the verb names what is done with them: running off copies. It is easily blurred with casting the plates, since one word covers both steps. The difference is between making the plate and printing from it. Printing from plates rather than standing type is what made long, repeated runs practical.

7. 7
   adjective

   Of a book or edition: produced from stereotype plates rather than from individually set type.

   The publisher issued a cheaper stereotype edition for schools.

   This printing was a stereotype edition, durable enough to reprint for decades.

   Note

   The adjective lives in one phrase, stereotype edition, and it arrived with controversy. A contributor signing himself G. O. P. T. complained in 1817 that printing had become "retrograde," since its whole principle was "to have the types moveable." Despite such objections, the technique suited books in steady demand. Stereotype editions of the Bible and the New Testament appear repeatedly in the 1820s.

8. 8
   verbfigurativelytransitive

   To make something firm or permanent; to fix it in an unchanging form.

   Decades of ritual had stereotyped the ceremony down to its smallest gesture.

   Constant repetition can stereotype an opinion until it hardens into dogma.

   Similarfix, fossilize, ossify, entrench, freeze

   Note

   The printing plate became a metaphor: what has been cast in metal can no longer be changed. In Scotland as It Was and as It Is (1887), George Campbell, Duke of Argyll, writes of causes tending to "stereotype and aggravate the poverty of old conditions." The objects are conditions, customs or opinions, and the verb often carries regret. Whatever is stereotyped has hardened against change.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   In the Unified Modeling Language, a mechanism that extends an existing element to create a new one with added, specialized meaning.

   She applied a stereotype to the component so it would render as an interface.

   Custom stereotypes let teams adapt the notation to their own domain.

   Note

   Software modelers use the word for a way of bending UML to a team's own needs without altering the language itself. A stereotype specializes an existing kind of model element, such as a class or a component, by adding constraints, properties or meaning. Related stereotypes are typically gathered into a profile, which is then applied to a model.

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