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Wiktionary

meme

See also: Meme, mémé, mème, même, mëmë, mêmê, me̱me, me'me', and məmə

English

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Etymology 1

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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]

Pronunciation

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  • enPR: mēm, IPA(key): /miːm/
  • Rhymes: -iːm
  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

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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
Derived terms
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Translations
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See also
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Verb

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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.”

References

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  1. ^ 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'.
  2. ^ 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.”

Further reading

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Etymology 2

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From French mémé (“granny”).

Noun

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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.

Anagrams

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Cebuano

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Etymology 1

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Onomatopoeic.

Verb

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meme

  1. (childish) to sleep

Etymology 2

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Borrowed from English meme.

Noun

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meme

  1. a meme

Danish

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Noun

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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)

Indonesian

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Etymology

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Borrowed from English meme.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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

  1. meme

References

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Italian

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Noun

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meme m (plural memi)

  1. (protoscience) meme

Anagrams

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Kongo

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Noun

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

  1. sheep

Luba-Kasai

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Pronoun

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meme

  1. me

Mandarin

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Romanization

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meme (Zhuyin ˙ㄇㄜ ˙ㄇㄜ)

  1. Hanyu Pinyin reading of 麼麼／么么

Northern Ohlone

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Verb

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meme

  1. (Ramaytush dialect) kill

Pajapan Nahuatl

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Noun

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meme

  1. butterfly

Portuguese

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Etymology

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Borrowed from English meme.

Pronunciation

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  • Hyphenation: me‧me
  • Rhymes: -emi

Noun

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meme m (plural memes)

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

Spanish

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Etymology

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Borrowed from English meme.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈmeme/ [ˈme.me]
  • Rhymes: -eme
  • Syllabification: me‧me

Noun

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meme m (plural memes)

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

Further reading

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Swedish

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Noun

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meme n or c

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

Usage notes

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Much more common than mem for internet memes.

Declension

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Declension of meme
nominative genitive
singular indefinite meme memes
definite memet memets
plural indefinite memes, memer memes, memers
definite memen, memesen memens, memesens
Declension of meme
nominative genitive
singular indefinite meme memes
definite memen memens
plural indefinite memes, memer memes, memers
definite memen, memesen memens, memesens

References

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Tok Pisin

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Etymology

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

Noun

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meme

  1. goat

Turkish

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Etymology

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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.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /meˈme/
  • Hyphenation: me‧me

Noun

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meme (definite accusative memeyi, plural memeler)

  1. (anatomy) breast

Declension

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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
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