Meme (pronounced
meem)
(1) Any unit of cultural information, such as a
practice or idea, that is transmitted orally or by repeated action (by
imitation) from one mind to another, through generations, in a manner comparable
to the transmission of genes; the synonym is culturgen
(2) On the internet, a cultural item in the form
of an image, video, phrase etc, that is spread and often altered in a creative
or humorous way.
(3) In Internet slang, a derogatory term to
describe something not to be taken seriously (meme job, meme degree etc).
(4) To turn into a meme; to use a meme.
1976: From the Ancient Greek mīmeîsthai (to imitate, copy) and a shortening of mimeme, from the Ancient Greek μίμημα (mīmēma) (imitated thing) from μιμεῖσθαι (mīmeîsthai)
(to imitate), from μῖμος (mimos) (imitation, copy; mime). Structurally, the word was shortened
(following the model of gene) from mimeme
and anglicized to emulate the form of a noun derived from the Ancient Greek mīméomai with the deverbal suffix -μα (-ma), from μῖμος (mîmos). The word was coined by British evolutionary
biologist Richard Dawkins (b 1941) and used first in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. The construct was m(ime) + -eme and Dawkins apologized to classical scholars
for what they would think a most improper form, explaining he wanted something monosyllabic
and if they preferred they could think of it as related to the French word même
(“same or alike” although the meaning does shift with the context of use). Helpfully, he added it should be pronounced to
rhyme with “cream”. In the way English
forms proliferate (often with short lives) on the internet, meme has been the
source of many coining including dank meme, memeable, memedom, memesque,
memeable, memed, memeplex, meme-pool, memescape, memetic, memeworthy, memey, memome
& memeable.
The more widely used concept of “a cultural fragment distributed on the internet” was created by lawyer Michael Godwin (b 1956) of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and was first documented in 1994, use beginning to spike in 1997. Godwin was the author also of Godwin's law (rule) which states that the longer an online exchange lasts, the greater the probability that some comparison with Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) or the Nazi regime will be invoked. There’s some evidence suggesting the rule may not (statistically) operate as described but it remains a useful tool for determining the point at which a discussion has passed a certain threshold. The concept of the meme is very old, examples noted in the graffiti of Antiquity and anthropologists have cited prehistoric example; the pre-internet exemplar in the modern age being "Kilroy was here" which proliferated with extraordinary rapidity during World War II (1939-1945). Many languages have adopted meme, some in the original sense from biological science, most in the more recent application used on the internet but there are other meanings. There was the French même and the Turkish meme was from the Ottoman Turkish ممه (nipple, breast (and described by most dictionaries as “a childish term”)), following the Ancient Greek μᾰ́μμη (mámmē) and the Persian ممه (mame). Meme is a noun, verb & adjective and meamed & meaming are verbs;the noun plural is memes.
Dawkins coined meme to describe the concept of
the intra- and trans-generational cultural spread of ideas and cultural
phenomena, his construct being analogous with the agent of evolutionary biology,
the gene. He didn’t claim the idea was
new, noting the earlier work of geneticists & ethologists and as early as 1904
German zoologist Richard Semon (1859-1918) had published The Mneme and mneme in which he included his theory which explored a
vaguely similar idea although one which was later disproved as understandings of
genetics improved. Closer to the thoughts
of Dawkins was La Vie des Termites (The
Life of White Ants (1926)), an entomological book by Nobel laureate in
literature Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) which remains controversial because
of the extent of the author’s plagiarism although he would later acknowledge a debt
to the nineteenth century work of English biologist TH Huxley (1825–1895).
Dawkins' point was that evolution depended ultimately only a self-replicating unit of transmission which, in biological evolution, was the gene and by analogy, human behaviour and cultural evolution could helpfully be described, at least in part, by memes, subject as they were to the influences and pressures of evolution. Also, just as genes don’t always replicate as exact duplicates, memes existed and replicated imperfectly, things being combined, refined and rejected, the interactions creating new memes and thus, over time, cultures in some ways stayed the same; in others, things changed. The concept was well-received by cultural theorists and critics but less effusive were many scientists, some of whom felt the gene/meme analogy a bit strained because, unlike genetic material, memes couldn’t be studied by the scientific method nor reduced to mathematical description, there being nothing even vaguely similar to the DNA which is the definable code of the gene.
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