stereotypenoun/ˈstɛ.ɹi.əˌtaɪp/

• 1

  A conventional, formulaic, and often oversimplified or exaggerated conception, opinion, or image of (a person or a group of people).

  • Not all Zumbetonians wear plimsolls. That's just a stereotype.
  • Instead we notice a trait which marks a well known type, and fill in the rest of the picture by means of the stereotypes we carry about in our heads.
• 2

  human-sciencespsychologysciencesA person who is regarded as embodying or conforming to a set image or type.

• 3

  mediaprintingpublishingA metal printing plate cast from a matrix moulded from a raised printing surface.

• 4

  computingengineeringmathematicsAn extensibility mechanism of the Unified Modeling Language, allowing a new element to be derived from an existing one with added specializations.

stereotypeverb/ˈstɛ.ɹi.əˌtaɪp/

• 1

  To make a stereotype of someone or something, or characterize someone by a stereotype.

  • Unable to ascertain what is in the minds of so many individuals, he must try to simplify his problems by eliminating individual differences: he must try to control and stereotype interests and beliefs by education and propaganda.
  • The heroines of these plays speak out against intraracial biases, stereotyping, lynchmobs, illiteracy, poverty, promiscuity, self-righteousness, verbally abusive men, rape, and miscegenation. […] Without warning the doctor, she chokes the life out of her child in order to keep him safe from white lynchmobs.
• 2

  mediaprintingpublishingTo prepare for printing in stereotype; to produce stereotype plates of.

  • to stereotype the Bible
• 3

  mediaprintingpublishingTo print from a stereotype.

• 4

  To make firm or permanent; to fix.

  • Powerful causes tending to stereotype and aggravate the poverty of old conditions.

stereotypeadj/ˈstɛ.ɹi.əˌtaɪp/

• 1

  Of an edition: printed in stereotype.

  • At the present Epoch (1800), the art of Printing is become rather retrograde; or we should not hear so much of Stereotype editions. Surely the use and very principle of the invention of Printing, is to have the types moveable!
  • Yet the whole of this mighty preparation ended in the production of a small stereotype edition of the New Testament, without the usual distinction of verses, and nearly without notes.
• 2

  rareSynonym of stereotyped.

  • It is an ingenious expression which I owe to you, sir, that the manners of the East are as it were stereotype. Ahhough I do not conceive that they are quite so strongly marked, yet, to make my idea understood, I would say that they are like the last impressions taken from a copper-plate engraving, where the whole of the subject to be represented is made out, although parts of it from much use have been obliterated.
  • Cartels by the hundred: which he, since the Constitution must be made first, and his time is precious, answers now always with a kind of stereotype formula: ‘Monsieur, you are put upon my List; but I warn you that it is long, and I grant no preferences.’