Other forms: stereotypes
A stereotype is a fixed oversimplified image of a whole group. A racial stereotype, challenge the stereotype, play to a stereotype.
The fixedness is the problem: a stereotype resists the evidence of individual people, which is what makes it different from a generalisation. Walter Lippmann gave the word this sense in 1922. It was a printing term first — a solid plate cast from a mould, used to print the same page over and over, which is exactly the metaphor. Note stereotypical.
1nounstereotypeA fixed oversimplified image of a whole group.
“The film relies on the tired stereotype of the lazy teenager who never leaves his room.”
stereotype is a fixed image.
French stéréotype is stereo-, solid, plus type. It named a fixed printing plate from 1817, and Walter Lippmann applied it to fixed mental images in 1922.
French
stéréotype
English, today
stereotype
French stéréotype, 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA