1
[ adjective ] lacking spontaneity or originality or individuality

Examples

"stereotyped phrases of condolence" "even his profanity was unimaginative"

Used in print

(Bell I. Wiley, "Home Letters of Johnny Reb and Billy...)

Owing to the restrained usages characteristic of 19_th century America , these letters usually were stereotyped and revealed little depth of feeling .

(William C. Smith, "Why Fear Ideas?"...)

Demagogues of this sort found communist bogeys lurking behind any new idea that would run counter to stereotyped notions .

(Harold Searles, "Schizophrenic Communication,"...)

For_example , one hebephrenic man used_to annoy me , month after month , by saying , whenever I got_up to leave and made my fairly steoreotyped comment that I would be seeing him on the following day , or whenever , `` You 're welcome '' , in a notably condescending fashion - as though it were his due for me to thank him for the privilege of spending the hour with him , and he were thus pointing_up my failure to utter a humbly grateful , `` thank_you '' to him at the end of each session .

One finds , for_example , that a terse and stereotyped verbal expression , seeming at_first to be a mere hollow convention , reveals itself over the months of therapy as the vehicle for expressing the most varied and intense feelings , and the most unconventional of meanings .

one cannot assume , of_course , that all these accumulated meanings were inherent in the stereotype at the beginning of the therapy , or at any one time later_on when the stereotype was uttered ; probably it is correct to think_of it as a matter of a well grooved , stereotyped mode of expression - and no , or but a_few , other communicational grooves , as_yet - being there , available for the patient 's use , as newly emerging emotions and ideas well_up in him over the course of months .

Related terms

conventional

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