meme
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: mēm
ipa: /miːm/
rhymes: -iːm
Forms: form: memes
Etymology: 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”). The concept was later applied to the Internet by Mike Godwin.
Senses: examples: text: Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.
ref: 1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene:
text: For most of the population, the media system is, I think, a different one. It's not just the case that it tries to entertain them. It tries to entertain them through memes, which will intensify attitudes that support the interests of elites.
ref: 1988, Noam Chomsky, Massey Lectures (Necessary Illusions):
text: Related memes tend to form mutually supporting meme-complexes such as religions, political ideologies, scientific theories, and New Age dogmas.
ref: 2002, Rita Carter, Exploring Consciousness, page 242:
text: 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.
ref: 2014, James Lambert, “A Much Tortured Expression: A New Look At ‘Hobson-Jobson’”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 27, number 1, page 67:
synonyms: culturgen
qualifier: originally
glosses: 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.
examples: text: He posted a meme that went viral within a few hours on social media.
text: He stuck memes on the wall to campaign for the position of President.
text: 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.
ref: 1994 January 10, Mike Godwin, “Meme, Counter-meme”, in Wired:
text: I do...but my journal is a mess. It's mostly filled with memes and my bitching about a house I am building.
ref: 2005, darklily, “OT: Livejournal”, in soc.sexuality.general (Usenet):
text: 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.
ref: 2012, Greg Jarboe, You Tube and Video Marketing, 2nd edition:
text: Harlem Shake meme: the new Gangnam Style? [headline]
ref: 2013 February 8, Tim Jonze, “Harlem Shake meme: the new Gangnam Style?”, in The Guardian:
text: 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.
ref: 2017 December 15, Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Life on the Meme Council: Meet the Internet’s Gatekeepers”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
text: Haha, memes are funny! Until they totally become racist. Pepe the Frog lived a very normal meme life right up until online trolls turned him into a green thing of hate in 2016. It got so bad his creator symbolically killed him off in 2017.
ref: 2019 December 31, AJ Willingham, “All the trends we loved and hated in the 2010s”, in CNN:
text: He said that NFT sales had helped establish memes as a sophisticated art form and “serious pieces of culture.”
ref: 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:
glosses: Media, usually humorous, which is copied and circulated online with slight adaptations, such as basic pictures, video templates, etc.
examples: text: This meme generator lets you make your own memes by adding a caption to existing images, or by uploading your own image.
text: I'm always posting memes on the groupchat.
glosses: A specific instance of a meme, such as an image macro or a video, often with humorous superimposed text.
examples: text: It's a meme degree, you know. Good luck getting a job from that.
text: I can't believe I fell for the bulking meme.
glosses: Something which is deceptive; a trick, a ruse.
examples: text: It's a meme degree, you know. Good luck getting a job from that.
text: Jogging is a meme.
glosses: Something not to be taken seriously; a joke.
examples: text: kink meme
text: anon meme
glosses: A work produced and shared in response to a prompt or suggestion within an online group.
Derived terms: animation meme
anon meme
antimeme
countermeme
dank meme
ememe
Facebook meme
forced meme
kink meme
maymay
memeable
meme coin
memedom
memehood
memeification
memeify
memeless
memelike
memelord
meme magic
memeplex
meme pool
memer
memery
memescape
meme-speak
memester
meme stock
memetic
memetic algorithm
memetic engineering
memetics
memeverse
memeworthy
memey
memic
meming
memocide
memology
memome
memosphere
teme
Related terms: mimesis
chain letter
forward
replicator