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I've been wondering about this for a while, and the question didn't really come out right. The word, "stereotypical", i have been wanting to use for someone who often stereotypes someone. Let me give you an example. If someone was to say, "All boys are uneducated"(which they aren't, by the way), then my response would be, "That is very stereotypical of you", but of course that is not the right way to use this word. I know the word stereotypical means, (according to google) "relating to a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing" but i thought it meant a word to describe some one making generalizations or stereotypes on a specific person.

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  • See this similar question which recommends bigot, prejudiced, intolerant amongst other words.
    – user252723
    Oct 5, 2017 at 4:04
  • You mean a person who typecasts someone in a particular stereotype?
    – fid
    Oct 5, 2017 at 9:06
  • Your Google reference is a bit simplistic but broadly, stereotypical does mean relating to a widely held but fixed and oversimplified idea of a type of person or thing and broadly no, it isn't a word to describe someone making generalizations or stereotypes about anything. Oct 6, 2017 at 20:34

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Might be that person is profiling (though it's not an adjective but a verb). it might be a bigot as well (though that word denotes racism as well). looking at your example i would go with generalizing (though again its a verb not an adjective), and say 'you are making a generalization'.

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  • Generalizing and stereotyping are not the same. E.g. if you say "he's black, so he must be a criminal", and I respond with "you're generalizing", then I'm saying that on average, statistically, your assumption is true (just maybe not for this particular person). Stereotyping, on the other hand, does not imply that the assumption is correct in a broad general sense, it's closer in meaning to "blind attribution".
    – Flater
    Dec 4, 2017 at 13:22
  • To avoid a minefield: Stereotypes are often created when a sufficient amount of people considers something to be (sufficiently) correct. That means that a stereotype may or may not have been a correct generalization when it was created. It would be correct to say that some stereotypes are generalizations, but not all stereotypes are generalizations. Since we cannot know for sure that this is the case for the OP's current stereotype, I would avoid "generalization".
    – Flater
    Dec 4, 2017 at 13:26

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