Stereotypings

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The process of categorizing individuals or groups based on oversimplified and generalized traits or characteristics
2. The act of applying fixed and often inaccurate ideas to people or situations, often leading to biased perceptions
3. A practice involving the creation and dissemination of widely held but simplified beliefs about a particular group or category of people

Etymology: "Stereotypings" is simply the plural of "stereotyping," the noun for the act of categorizing people or groups by oversimplified, generalized traits. The base term goes back to the printing trade. A stereotype was a solid plate cast from a mould of set type, so that one fixed image could be reproduced again and again, and the word's core idea of an unchanging, mass-produced copy carried over into its later sense. Applied to people, the sense of a fixed image that never varies emerged in the early twentieth century, when the word was borrowed into social description. The plural form simply counts individual acts of such categorizing, which is why it is used where one person might make several separate judgments about several groups.

Synonyms: categorization, labeling