meme

Meanings

Noun

• Any unit of 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.
• Media, usually humorous, which is copied and circulated online with slight adaptations, including quizzes, basic pictures, video templates etc.
• A myth circulating as truth, such as ineffective practices presented as effective.

Verb

• To turn into a meme; to use a meme, especially to achieve a goal in real life.
• To create and use humorous memes.
• To joke around.

Origin

• mime + -eme
• 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 with the deverbal suffix -μα, from μῖμος.
• {{cite-book
• |year=1976
• |title=The Selfish Gene
• |author=Richard Dawkins
• |authorlink=Richard Dawkins
• |passage=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'.
• The concept was later applied to the Internet by Mike Godwin.
• {{cite-web
• |date=1994-01-10
• |work=Wired
• |author=Mike Godwin
• |authorlink=Mike Godwin
• |title=Meme, Counter-meme
• |url=https://www.wired.com/1994/10/godwin-if-2/