stereotype

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A fixed, oversimplified idea about what a person or group is like.

   The film plays on tired stereotypes about teenagers.

2. 2
   verb

   To unfairly judge a person or group based on a fixed idea.

   He was stereotyped as lazy just because of where he came from.

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.

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