Link Centre Dictionary

meme

UK/miːm/ US/ˈmim/ uncommon informal

noun

1.

a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation)

  • “memes are the cultural counterpart of genes”

Origin

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.

Phrases

  • animation meme
  • anon meme
  • dank meme
  • Facebook meme
  • forced meme
  • kink meme
  • meme coin
  • meme magic
  • meme on

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.