stereotyped

1. 1
   adjective

   Lacking originality and conforming to a tired, overused pattern rather than offering anything fresh.

   The campaign relied on stereotyped images of suburban family life.

   Reviewers complained that the dialogue felt stereotyped and lifeless.

   Similarhackneyed, trite, formulaic, stock, banal

   Oppositeoriginal, fresh, novel, innovative

   Note

   A critic's word for the stock character, usually placed right before the type it dismisses. L. Frank Baum, introducing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900, wanted fairy tales rid of "the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy." Elizabeth Pincus, reviewing in 1989, faulted "a stereotyped Latino stud." It overlaps almost entirely with stereotypical, and for both writers it is a complaint, never praise.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of stereotype.

   Early films stereotyped entire ethnic groups in crude, mocking ways.

   Workers in that trade were often stereotyped as uneducated.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs, so the clause around it decides which. In films stereotyped whole groups it is the simple past; in groups were stereotyped as uneducated it is the participle with be. The verb carries a social meaning and a print-shop one, casting or printing from plates, with a figurative 'to fix' between them. The participle hardens into adjectives for each, including the printing sense.

3. 3
   adjective

   Marked by a fixed, established pattern that repeats in the same form and does not vary.

   Researchers recorded the animal's stereotyped pacing along the same path for hours.

   The ceremony had a stereotyped order that every village followed exactly.

   Similarrepetitive, fixed, invariable, ritualized, set

   Oppositevariable, varied, flexible

4. 4
   adjective

   Produced by printing from solid metal plates cast from a mold of set type.

   Nineteenth-century publishers favored stereotyped editions for their durability.

   Each stereotyped page came from a single cast plate rather than standing type.

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