Overgeneralization

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of overgeneralizing. uncountable, usually

    ""George Orwell put the easy use of words like 'unique' under the headings of 'pretentious diction' and overgeneralization."

  2. 2
    An instance of overgeneralizing. countable

    "It's an overgeneralization to say that everywhere you look is the hand of man in the presettlement era," says Thomas Swetnam, a fire ecologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson."

Example

More examples

""George Orwell put the easy use of words like 'unique' under the headings of 'pretentious diction' and overgeneralization."

Etymology

From over- + generalization.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.