Word family noun generalization general generalist generality adjective general generalist generalized verb generalize adverb generally
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishgeneralizationgen‧e‧ral‧i‧za‧tion (also generalisation British English) /ˌdʒenərəlaɪˈzeɪʃən $ -lə-/ ●○○ noun 1 [countable]SIMPLE/NOT COMPLICATED a statement about all the members of a group that may be true in some or many situations but is not true in every case You can’t make generalizations about what men and women are like.broad/sweeping/gross generalization a sweeping generalization based on speculation2 [uncountable]SIMPLE/NOT COMPLICATED the act of making generalizationsExamples from the Corpus
generalization• Although they embody a real-world claim about how agents are motivated, they function more like a paradigm than a generalization.• In our example, the data seem too contradictory to support any clear generalization about gender and voting.• The limited body of mathematical results describing chaotic control networks makes generalization difficult.• Sometimes the phenomena are so complicated or the evidence is so mixed that no generalization is possible.• Nor is science concerned with just the kinds of generalization that make up a theory of determinism with respect to our lives.• Those who reject generalization insist that history consists of unique and separate events.• In such schemes generalization is regarded as a process applicable to different areas of content.• Comparison of evidence from other countries or geographical regions would seek to confirm this generalization.broad/sweeping/gross generalization• That image is, of course, a gross generalization. 