Stereotype

How to spell stereotype

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce stereotype

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stereotype mean?

1. nounA widely held but oversimplified and fixed idea about a particular type of person or thing.
2. verbTo view or represent a person or group according to a fixed, oversimplified idea.

Stereotype in a sentence

• noun

  The advertisement leaned on a tired stereotype of the absent-minded professor.

• verb

  Managers should not stereotype candidates based on their accent or background.

• noun

  Her research challenged the common stereotype that older workers resist new technology.

• verb

  The article warned reporters never to stereotype entire communities after a single incident.

Where does stereotype come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word was coined in French as stereotype in 1798 by the printer Firmin Didot, who joined the Greek stereos, meaning 'solid' or 'firm', to typos, meaning 'an impression or mark made by striking'. It originally named a printing process in which a whole page of type was cast as one solid metal plate rather than set from loose individual letters, so the same fixed plate could print copy after copy without change. English borrowed the printing term in the early 1800s, and from that literal idea of an unchanging cast plate grew the figurative meaning of a fixed, repeated mental image. The journalist Walter Lippmann popularised the modern social sense in his 1922 book Public Opinion, describing the rigid pictures people carry in their heads about groups of others. The spelling trap lives in the seams: the 'stereo' opening (the same element as in stereo sound, which is solid, three-dimensional sound) and the 'type' ending that recalls the old metal type, with the easily forgotten 'o' linking them.

How the word is built

• stereo- (from Greek stereos: solid, firm, three-dimensional)
• type (from Greek typos: a mark or impression left by striking)