meme
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: Etymology tree
English mimemeclip.
English meme
Clipping of 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.
Base: mime
Affixes: -eme
Inflected forms:
form: memes
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: memes
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: memeing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: meming
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: memed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: memed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
examples: Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.
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.
Related memes tend to form mutually supporting meme-complexes such as religions, political ideologies, scientific theories, and New Age dogmas.
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.
gloss: Media, usually humorous, which is copied and circulated online with slight adaptations, such as basic pictures, video templates, etc.
pos: noun
tags: Internet
examples: He posted a meme that went viral within a few hours on social media.
He stuck memes on the wall to campaign for the position of President.
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.
I do...but my journal is a mess. It's mostly filled with memes and my bitching about a house I am building.
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.
This latest Internet meme is shocking. But most shocking of all is the person who started the meme isn't a person at all, but a cat who seems to have no regard for people's safety.
Harlem Shake meme: the new Gangnam Style? [headline]
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.
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.
He said that NFT sales had helped establish memes as a sophisticated art form and “serious pieces of culture.”
gloss: A specific instance of a meme, such as an image macro or a video, often with humorous superimposed text.
pos: noun
tags: Internet
examples: 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.
gloss: Something which is deceptive; a trick, a ruse.
pos: noun
tags: Internet
derogatory
examples: It's a meme degree, you know. Good luck getting a job from that.
I can't believe I fell for the bulking meme.
gloss: Something not to be taken seriously; a joke.
pos: noun
tags: Internet
derogatory
examples: It's a meme degree, you know. Good luck getting a job from that.
Jogging is a meme.
gloss: A work produced and shared in response to a prompt or suggestion within an online group.
pos: noun
tags: Internet
examples: kink meme
anon meme
gloss: To create and use humorous memes.
pos: verb
tags: Internet
intransitive
examples: Yesterday afternoon four kids went to the hospital for injuries resulting from memeing in front of a local cafe. Faith Hilling, Taylor Swifting. These are things that will get you killed!
One axiom commonly seen on /pol/ is "The Left Can't Meme"; in other words, left-wing meme jokes aren't funny.
gloss: To turn into a meme; to use a meme, especially to achieve a goal in real life.
pos: verb
tags: Internet
transitive
examples: Scott Greer, a deputy editor of the Daily Caller, tweeted, “Cernovich memed #SickHillary into reality. Never doubt the power of memes.”
David Moyes succeeding Slaven Bilić as West Ham United manager is being memed into existence by the internet, Football Burp understands.
“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.
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.
gloss: To joke around.
pos: verb
tags: Internet
broadly
intransitive
examples: actually, it wasn't my mental functioning. i'm just meming.
“[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.”
Some of his fellow fascists thought he was just “meming and pranking”; others dismissed it as “some autistic phase.”
Related words: mimesis
chain letter
forward
replicator
Derived words: 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
meme on
Translations: