Words / P / Business

pigeonhole

verb/ˈpɪdʒɪnhəʊl/

B1CEFR level
30/100Rarity: fairly common
TechnicalRegister

To confine someone narrowly to a single category or role.

Talented generalists left because the firm kept pigeonholing them as back-office support.

Similar: typecast

Topic: Human resources in Business English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More business words: Human resources