Stereotypical

How to spell stereotypical

13 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce stereotypical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stereotypical mean?

1. adjectiveConforming to a fixed, oversimplified, and widely held image of a type of person or thing.

Stereotypical in a sentence

• The advert relied on a stereotypical image of the busy working mother.

• His stereotypical view of accountants as dull people quickly proved wrong.

Where does stereotypical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word grows out of stereotype, which began life as a very literal printing term in late eighteenth century France. The French stereotype combined two Greek elements: stereos, meaning 'solid' or 'firm', and typos, meaning 'impression', 'mould', or 'stamp'. A stereotype was originally a solid metal printing plate cast from a mould of set type, so that the same page could be printed over and over without resetting the letters. Because such a plate reproduced the identical image endlessly, the word drifted by the early nineteenth century into its modern figurative sense: a fixed, oversimplified idea repeated again and again. The adjective stereotypical simply adds the familiar -ical ending, and the spelling preserves the Greek stereo- (the same element in stereo sound and stereoscopic), which is why it keeps that tricky run of unstressed vowels in the middle.

How the word is built

• stereo- (solid, fixed, from Greek stereos)
• typ (impression, from Greek typos)
• -ical (adjective suffix)