20
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Is there a term that describes reducing a person's identity to certain characteristics?
Is there a term that describes reducing a person's identity to certain characteristics, behaviours or traits that are not physical?
One easy answer would be reductionist (adjective).
Dictionary.com ...
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12
votes
Is there a term that describes reducing a person's identity to certain characteristics?
You are probably looking for caricature:
a picture, description, etc., ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of persons or things.
(Dictionary.com)
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10
votes
Accepted
Is there a term that describes reducing a person's identity to certain characteristics?
This can be called typecasting someone. The term originally comes from acting, but it is often used metaphorically; TfD defines it as:
To perceive or represent [someone] in reductive or stereotyped ...
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8
votes
Accepted
Why does the name of the UK not change to UQ during the reign of a Queen?
As MW explains, "kingdom" means:
a politically organized community or major territorial unit having a monarchical form of government headed by a king or queen
If Ngram Viewer is to be ...
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5
votes
Is there a term that describes reducing a person's identity to certain characteristics?
The term pigeonhole fits what you are looking for. The Cambridge Dictionary has some definitions for this:
to have an often unfair idea of what type someone or something is
to put someone or ...
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5
votes
Accepted
Term for creating Terminology
You are probably asking about taxonomy, which is well described by Wikipedia:
Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a ...
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4
votes
Accepted
Term for (humorous) sentences that end in unexpected ways
You are perhaps describing a paraprosdokian. As Wikipedia explains, this is
a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way ...
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4
votes
Accepted
The traditional grammar term for 'nominals'
It can be hard to generalize about traditional/school grammar — different books and different teachers have different idiosyncratic views and terminology — but I don't think that most traditional ...
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3
votes
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What do you call this function in language: 'ignite' → 'igniter' ; 'wait'→'waiter' ; 'run' →'runner"
Nominalization is the process of how a verb or adjective can be used as a noun through applying affixes. Generally suffixes like -ion, -ment, and -er can turn verbs into nouns.
Wikipedia gives:
In ...
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3
votes
Accepted
What do you call the place that terminates a water channel?
That structure is a dam, defined by MW as:
a barrier preventing the flow of water or of loose solid materials (such as soil or snow)
As the definition implies, this term applies, not only to (say) ...
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2
votes
Accepted
What is the origin and meaning of the term "rack rent"?
According to Google Books the expression “rack rent”was used mainly during the 19th century, but its usage and has been constantly decreasing since then. Its origin, apparently an Irish expression in ...
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2
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Is there a word like "alphanumeric" but is inclusive of symbols and special characters as well?
You could probably get away with "character-based" if you really wanted an adjective but it will still leave the reader wondering what you want to say.
The fact that no single word springs ...
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2
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Is there a term that describes reducing a person's identity to certain characteristics?
"The issue with all the previous thoughts is that they come from a self-centred, judgemental, labelling attitude".
The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that one of the meanings of ...
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1
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Is there a term that describes reducing a person's identity to certain characteristics?
Essentialism
Essentialist thinking says that 'if you are a member of this group, you have all the traits that I associate with that group'.
"The issue with all the previous thoughts is that they ...
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1
vote
What word could I use to simplify referring to it?
Anchor and Hook would give the right idea
I've read your question a few times and I interpret it like this. You are trying to describe a magical power, which will allow you to pull objects.
It ...
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1
vote
Is there a word like "alphanumeric" but is inclusive of symbols and special characters as well?
The purpose of the term alphanumeric isn't really to say that something contains letters and numbers; rather, it's to say that something contains nothing but letters and numbers. In fact, a string ...
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1
vote
Term for creating Terminology
You systematize terminology. This basically means that you create a useful map between the terminology of the domain and what you do with it or how you think about it. Medical terms are governed by ...
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1
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What do you call the place that terminates a water channel?
Not a terribly common thing to see, but they do have a name - plug dam.
Plugs may be dead ends, or they may separate salt water from brackish water to mediate old drainage canal intrusion problems.
...
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1
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What is the origin and meaning of the term "rack rent"?
Wikipedia has
Historically, rack-rent has often been a term of protest used to denote an unjustly excessive rent (the word "rack" evoking the medieval torture device),
which gives the ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible