Stereotype from Didot (1798): Greek stereos (solid) + typos (impression) = solid printing plate. Lippmann (1922) metaphorised it for fixed mental images of people — rigid impressions cast in the mind like metal plates. Twin of cliché (same printing workshop origin). PIE *ster- (stiff) + *tewp- (to strike).
A fixed, oversimplified image of a person or group; originally, a solid metal printing plate cast from movable type.
Coined by French printer Firmin Didot around 1798 from Greek stereos (στερεός, solid, firm, hard, three-dimensional) + typos (τύπος, a blow, an impression, a mark left by a blow, a pattern). PIE *ster- (stiff, rigid, spread out stiffly) gave stereos and also Latin sterilis (barren, stiff, unproductive), English stare (to look rigidly), stern (rigid), and starve (to stiffen with cold). PIE *tewp- (to strike) gave Greek typtein (to beat), typos (the mark of a blow
Stereotype and cliché are etymological twins from the same printing workshop. A stereotype was the solid plate; a cliché was the sound it made (or the matrix). Both began as printing terms, both became metaphors for rigid thinking. The word contains its own critique: an impression cast in solid metal, impossible to revise — exactly what makes stereotyped thinking dangerous.