stereotype

Meanings

1. A conventional, formulaic, and often oversimplified or exaggerated conception, opinion, or image of (a person or a group of people).
2. A person who is regarded as embodying or conforming to a set image or type.
3. A metal printing plate cast from a matrix moulded from a raised printing surface.
4. An extensibility mechanism of the Unified Modeling Language, allowing a new element to be derived from an existing one with added specializations.

1. To make a stereotype of someone or something, or characterize someone by a stereotype.
2. To prepare for printing in stereotype; to produce stereotype plates of.
3. To print from a stereotype.
4. To make firm or permanent; to fix.

1. Of an edition: printed in stereotype.
2. Synonym of stereotyped.

Etymology

Borrowed from French stéréotype (adjective), equivalent to stereo- + type. Printing sense is from 1817; the “conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image” sense is recorded from 1922 in Walter Lippmann’s book Public Opinion.