meme
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Etymology 1
Shortened from mimeme, equivalent to mime + -eme.
Coined by British biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. Shortened (after gene) from mimeme (compare English phoneme), anglicized as if from a noun derived from Ancient Greek μῑμέομαι (mīméomai) with the deverbal suffix -μα (-ma), from μῖμος (mîmos, “imitation, copy”).[1] The concept was later applied to the Internet by Mike Godwin.[2]
Pronunciation
Noun
meme (plural memes)
- (originally) Any unit of (originally cultural) information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another in a comparable way to the transmission of genes.
- Synonym: culturgen
- 1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene:
- Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.
- 2002, Rita Carter, Exploring Consciousness, page 242:
- Related memes tend to form mutually supporting meme-complexes such as religions, political ideologies, scientific theories, and New Age dogmas.
- 2014, James Lambert, “A Much Tortured Expression: A New Look At ‘Hobson-Jobson’”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 27, number 1, page 67:
- The original Hobson and Jobson stock comic characters have died out as a meme, as has the application of their names to the Muharram in India.
- (Internet) Media, usually humorous, which is copied and circulated online with slight adaptations, such as basic pictures, video templates, etc. [from 1993]
- 2005, darklily, “OT: Livejournal”, in soc.sexuality.general (Usenet):
- I do...but my journal is a mess. It's mostly filled with memes and my bitching about a house I am building.
- 2012, Greg Jarboe, You Tube and Video Marketing, 2nd edition:
- The idea was to append Keyboard Cat to the end of a blooper video to "play" that person offstage after a mistake or gaffe, like getting the hook in the days of vaudeville. The meme became popular, Ashton Kutcher tweeted about it to more than 1 million followers, and more than 4,000 such videos have now been made.
- 2017 December 15, Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Life on the Meme Council: Meet the Internet’s Gatekeepers”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
- Social networks produce inside jokes at a relentless pace. The best, worst, stupidest and funniest of those jokes become memes, and either you get them or you don’t.
- 2021 April 29, Marie Fazio, quoting Ben Lashes, “The World Knows Her as ‘Disaster Girl.’ She Just Made $500,000 Off the Meme.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
- He said that NFT sales had helped establish memes as a sophisticated art form and “serious pieces of culture.”
- (Internet) A specific instance of a meme, such as an image macro or a video, often with humorous superimposed text.
- This meme generator lets you make your own memes by adding a caption to existing images, or by uploading your own image.
- I'm always posting memes on the groupchat.
- (Internet slang, derogatory) Something not to be taken seriously; a joke.
- It's a meme degree, you know. Good luck getting a job from that.
- Jogging is a meme.
- (Internet) A work produced and shared in response to a prompt or suggestion within an online group.
- kink meme
- anon meme
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
unit of cultural information
|
media copied and circulated online
|
See also
Verb
meme (third-person singular simple present memes, present participle meming or memeing, simple past and past participle memed)
- (intransitive, Internet slang) To create and use humorous memes.
- 2018, Eric W. Saeger, Russian Nazi Troll Bots!:
- One axiom commonly seen on /pol/ is "The Left Can't Meme"; in other words, left-wing meme jokes aren't funny.
- (transitive, Internet slang) To turn into a meme; to use a meme, especially to achieve a goal in real life.
- Synonym: memeify
- 2022 September 22, Jess Thomson, “‘Becoming a meme totally helps a show’: is TV being written with epic gifs in mind?”, in The Guardian:
- “Succession’s language is so specific, unique and captivating that nearly every line is worthy of being ‘memed’, even if it’s just somebody saying ‘fuck off’ or ‘bad tweet!’” she says.
- 2024 March 5, Gabriella Paiella, quoting Messineo, “Why ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Became One of the Most Memed Films of the Year”, in GQ:
- In my experience the films that typically get memed are either really terrible (Madame Web), so huge that they’re everywhere (Barbie), or have a cast stacked with familiar faces so the memes cast a wide net for potential sharing.
- (intransitive, Internet slang, by extension) To joke around.
- 2004 May 17, you, “Truth vs. Lies”, in alt.slack (Usenet):
- actually, it wasn't my mental functioning. i'm just meming.
- 2018 December 13, Aja Romano, “YouTube’s most popular user amplified anti-Semitic rhetoric. Again.”, in Vox:
- “[P]ewdiepie is, once again, doing exactly what neo-nazis want,” Kotaku reporter Nathan Grayson commented on Twitter in response to the incident. “[W]hether he’s just meming or he ascribes to these values, it doesn’t matter. [W]hat matters is that he normalizes these ideas as jokes on THE platform where kids increasingly get their first exposure to the world at large.”
- 2019, Rachel Monroe, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, →ISBN:
- Some of his fellow fascists thought he was just “meming and pranking”; others dismissed it as “some autistic phase.”
References
- Richard Dawkins (1976) The Selfish Gene:
- We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.
- Mike Godwin (1994 January 10) “Meme, Counter-meme”, in Wired: “Not everyone saw the comparison to Nazis as a "meme" - most people on the Net, as elsewhere, had never heard of "memes" or "memetics." But now that we're living in an increasingly information-aware culture, it's time for that to change.”
Further reading
meme on Wikipedia.Wikipedia - Internet meme on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Etymology 2
Noun
meme (plural memes)
- (informal, term of endearment) granny; nana
- 2011, David G. Atwood II, Into Hell I Rode, page 32:
- When my parents got a divorce my dad washed his hands of my mom and me. He just pretended neither she nor I existed. If it weren't for my Meme, I would have lost all contact with the Atwood family after the divorce.
- 2014, Sarah O'Malley, Touching the Edge of Heaven, page 3:
- Then there was my Meme, my father's mother. She was one of the most wonderful, loving, craziest, funniest people I ever had in my life.
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