Everyday LifeGreek → English
Meme
/miːm/noun
A unit of culture that spreads by imitation, now especially an image or joke circulated online.
The Greek roots
μίμημα
mímēma
something imitated
μιμέομαι
miméomai
to imitate
Literally: “a thing copied”
The story of the word
Richard Dawkins wanted a one-syllable word that sounded like gene, so at the end of The Selfish Gene in 1976 he clipped the Greek μίμημα down to meme and admitted in the same breath that he hoped classicists would forgive him. His examples were tunes, catchphrases and fashions in building arches. The internet took the word thirty years later and narrowed it to captioned pictures, which fit his definition almost too neatly.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1976
Same family
mimemimicmimesispantomime
In a sentence
The meme was everywhere for two weeks and then vanished completely.