pigeonholing

verb

present participle of pigeonhole
as in categorizing
disapproving to unfairly think of or describe (someone or something) as belonging to only a certain category She likes to perform different types of music because she doesn't want to be pigeonholed.

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of pigeonholing Whether your perception of Gen Z is shaped by real-world interactions or two-dimensional headlines, pigeonholing a whole generation is reductive. — Alex Cooper, Fortune, 16 May 2026 McCurdy cautions against classifying Holiday as a blues singer and pigeonholing her into an age and culture. — Daniella Walsh, Oc Register, 21 Mar. 2026 The broader appeal and usefulness of the Dashaway eCT are just too dramatic to dedicate more time pigeonholing himself into a restrictive niche. — New Atlas, 28 Oct. 2025 Leibovitz has always resisted pigeonholing. — Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle, Forbes.com, 13 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pigeonholing
  1. categorizing
  2. classifying
  3. relegating
  4. separating
  5. identifying
Verb
  • Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday rejected the idea that election monitors being deployed to polls during the midterm elections will be armed, categorizing the notion as fearmongering and false.
    — Claire Carter, The Washington Examiner, 4 Oct. 2026
  • Some of the recent gains came from re-categorizing conservation agreements that had already existed.
    — Noah Haggerty, Los Angeles Times, 29 Sep. 2026
Definition of categorizing
Verb
  • Operators fed Maven intelligence classifying the elementary school as an Iranian military facility, and the system, in turn, marked it as one of the priority targets for day one of the war.
    — Kylie Jones, Vox, 25 Oct. 2026
  • The distinction matters because responding to a signal and accurately classifying an unfamiliar chemical mixture are separate tasks.
    — Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 24 Oct. 2026
Definition of classifying
Verb
  • Of course, other keyboard types were cheaper to produce, relegating Hall-effect keyboards to an afterthought for decades.
    — ArsTechnica, ArsTechnica, 5 Oct. 2026
  • However, relegating City to the second-tier Championship League would be a punishment that could hurt the rest of the league.
    — Kevin Baxter, Los Angeles Times, 29 Sep. 2026
Definition of relegating
Verb
  • The seven tiles must coordinate their movements and establish connections before separating and forming a new arrangement.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 29 Oct. 2026
  • Part of the work of growing up is separating from our parents, learning to see them as people who exist independently of us.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 28 Oct. 2026
Definition of separating
Verb
  • Acoustic monitoring could therefore provide an additional layer of protection by identifying unusual mechanical behaviour that might otherwise go unnoticed during routine inspections.
    — Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 26 Oct. 2026
  • But Rodrigues believes technology can augment traditional teaching methods by examining how a student solves an algebra problem or structures a piece of writing and identifying learning gaps.
    — Dalia Faheid, CNN Money, 26 Oct. 2026
Definition of identifying

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Cite this Entry

“Pigeonholing.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pigeonholing. Accessed 30 Oct. 2026.

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