meme - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

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]

meme (plural memes)

  1. (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.
  2. (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.
    • 2013 February 8, Tim Jonze, “Harlem Shake meme: the new Gangnam Style?”, in The Guardian‎[2]:
      Harlem Shake meme: the new Gangnam Style? [headline]
    • 2017 December 15, Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Life on the Meme Council: Meet the Internet’s Gatekeepers”, in The New York Times‎[3], →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[4], →ISSN:
      He said that NFT sales had helped establish memes as a sophisticated art form and “serious pieces of culture.”
  3. (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.
  4. (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.
  5. (Internet) A work produced and shared in response to a prompt or suggestion within an online group.
    kink meme
    anon meme

unit of cultural information

meme (third-person singular simple present memes, present participle meming or memeing, simple past and past participle memed)

  1. (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.

  2. (transitive, Internet slang) To turn into a meme; to use a meme, especially to achieve a goal in real life.
    Synonym: memeify

    • 2016 October 31, Andrew Marantz, “Trolls for Trump”, in The New Yorker‎[5], retrieved December 2, 2017:
      Scott Greer, a deputy editor of the Daily Caller, tweeted, “Cernovich memed #SickHillary into reality. Never doubt the power of memes.”
    • 2017 November 6, “David Moyes to West Ham “memed into existence by the internet””, in Football Burp‎[6], retrieved December 2, 2017:
      David Moyes succeeding Slaven Bilić as West Ham United manager is being memed into existence by the internet, Football Burp understands.
    • 2022 September 22, Jess Thomson, “‘Becoming a meme totally helps a show’: is TV being written with epic gifs in mind?”, in The Guardian‎[7]:
      “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[8]:
      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.

  3. (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.”

  4. ^ 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'.

  5. ^ Mike Godwin (1994 January 10) “Meme, Counter-meme”, in Wired‎[1]: “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.”

From French mémé (“granny”).

meme (plural memes)

  1. (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.

Onomatopoeic.

meme

  1. (childish) to sleep

Borrowed from English meme.

meme

  1. a meme

meme

  1. meme
    • 2019, Stine Bødker, Klar til kærlighed, Gyldendal A/S, →ISBN:
      Hvis du lige har taget et fint billede og fundet på en sjov caption, så hav det klar til at dele, kort efter I bliver venner, så du er sikker på, at han ser det. Tag ham i et sjovt meme eller et billede af noget, som I har talt om. Det er en ret low-key måde ...
      (please add an English translation of this quotation)
    • 2019, Andreas von der Recke, Jacob Harlev, Mikkel Sandal Hansen, Patrick Walther Thomsen, #Youngster: 5 dogmer til at tiltrække og fastholde millennials, BoD – Books on Demand, →ISBN, page 19:
      Hvis det ikke var for ham, kunne vi nok skrive 2018 på denne bogs udgivelsesdato. Hvis du kan finde et godt meme (Google billeder: memes) at åbne samtalen med Mikkel på, har du vundet hans hjerte. Men han respekterer kun dem, der kan ...
      (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Borrowed from English meme.

meme (plural **meme-meme, first-person possessive memeku, second-person possessive mememu, third-person possessive memenya)

  1. meme

meme m (plural memi)

  1. (protoscience) meme

meme class 5 (singular **meme, singular dimeme, plural mameme)

  1. sheep

meme

  1. me

meme (Zhuyin ˙ㄇㄜ ˙ㄇㄜ)

  1. Hanyu Pinyin reading of 麼麼／么么

meme

  1. (Ramaytush dialect) kill

meme

  1. butterfly

Borrowed from English meme.

meme m (plural memes)

  1. meme (unit of cultural information)
  2. (Internet) meme (humorous image, video or other media shared in the Internet)

Borrowed from English meme.

meme m (plural memes)

  1. meme (unit of cultural information)
  2. meme (Internet slang)

meme n or c

  1. Alternative form of mem
    Synonyms: (internet meme, slang) mejmej, (internet meme, slang, humorous) jagjag

Much more common than mem for internet memes.

Reduplication of English meh (onomatopoeia for the sound a goat makes)

meme

  1. goat

From Ottoman Turkish ممه (nipple, breast), a childish term formed like Ancient Greek μᾰ́μμη (mámmē) and Persian ممه (mame). In Turkic languages compare Azerbaijani məmə, Turkmen määme.

meme (definite accusative memeyi, plural memeler)

  1. (anatomy) breast
Inflection
Nominative meme
Definite accusative memeyi
Singular Plural
Nominative meme memeler
Definite accusative memeyi memeleri
Dative memeye memelere
Locative memede memelerde
Ablative memeden memelerden
Genitive memenin memelerin
Possessive forms Nominative Singular Plural 1st singular memem memelerim 2nd singular memen memelerin 3rd singular memesi memeleri 1st plural mememiz memelerimiz 2nd plural memeniz memeleriniz 3rd plural memeleri memeleri Definite accusative Singular Plural 1st singular mememi memelerimi 2nd singular memeni memelerini 3rd singular memesini memelerini 1st plural mememizi memelerimizi 2nd plural memenizi memelerinizi 3rd plural memelerini memelerini Dative Singular Plural 1st singular mememe memelerime 2nd singular memene memelerine 3rd singular memesine memelerine 1st plural mememize memelerimize 2nd plural memenize memelerinize 3rd plural memelerine memelerine Locative Singular Plural 1st singular mememde memelerimde 2nd singular memende memelerinde 3rd singular memesinde memelerinde 1st plural mememizde memelerimizde 2nd plural memenizde memelerinizde 3rd plural memelerinde memelerinde Ablative Singular Plural 1st singular mememden memelerimden 2nd singular memenden memelerinden 3rd singular memesinden memelerinden 1st plural mememizden memelerimizden 2nd plural memenizden memelerinizden 3rd plural memelerinden memelerinden Genitive Singular Plural 1st singular mememin memelerimin 2nd singular memenin memelerinin 3rd singular memesinin memelerinin 1st plural mememizin memelerimizin 2nd plural memenizin memelerinizin 3rd plural memelerinin memelerinin