Which of the following statements about polymorphism is false? Polymorphism enables you to deal in specifics and let the execution-time environment concern itself with the generalities. To get polymorphic behavior among existing objects, those objects must be instantiated from classes in the same inheritance hierarchy. With polymorphism, you can direct a variety of objects to behave in manners appropriate to those objects without even knowing their types. With polymorphism, new types of objects that can respond to existing messages can easily be incorporated into a system without modifying the base system.

Polymorphism is a fascinating concept that originated in the realm of object-oriented programming, allowing different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface. The term itself comes from the Greek words "poly" meaning many and "morph" meaning form. This powerful feature supports code reusability and flexibility, making programs easier to expand and maintain. In real-world applications, polymorphism is frequently found in software design patterns, such as the Strategy or Observer patterns. For example, in a graphics application, you could have a base class called "Shape" with derived classes like "Circle," "Square," and "Triangle." Polymorphism allows you to create a function that takes a "Shape" object and calls the appropriate method for rendering, enabling the application to work with any shape without knowing its specific type, making the code cleaner and more efficient!