meme

noun \ ˈmēm \

|Updated on: 18 Jul 2018

Definition of meme

1 : an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.
—Richard Dawkins

2 : an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media

… the band encouraged fans to make memes to advertise the U.S. release of their EP …
—William Gruger

The grumpy cat meme frowned its way onto the Internet in September 2012 and never turned its dissatisfied head back. Since then, the image of the cranky cat has grown more and more popular in direct proportion to appearing less and less impressed by fame.
—Anastasia Thrift

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memetic

play \mē-ˈme-tik, mə-\ adjective

- … the exhibition seeks to give a sense not only of Holmes's origins but of the real-world milieu in which Conan Doyle set him and of his memetic spread through the culture.
- —Sam Leith

meme was our Word of the Day on 07/13/2017. Hear the podcast!

Recent Examples of meme from the Web

What appeared to be the Wile E. Coyote-esque nature of the man’s final moments made him an instant, meme-worthy celebrity some 2,000 years after his death.

— New York Times, "He Died at Pompeii, but His Head Wasn’t Crushed by a Block," 29 June 2018
The World Cup’s most meme-worthy moment has arrived.

— andrew joseph, For The Win, "Senegal coach broke out the World Cup's most meme-worthy celebration," 19 June 2018
The girls — lacking any self-awareness — spouted off hilarious, meme-worthy quotes during a time when social media was just a twinkle in the internet’s eye.

— marie lodi, The Cut, "I Think About This a Lot: Ally Hilfiger’s Burrito Breakdown on Rich Girls," 18 June 2018
Get ready to take a ride through LA with more celeb duos and trios this month with the upcoming release of two more meme-worthy episodes of Apple Music's Carpool Karaoke series.

— connor whittum, Billboard, "New 'Carpool Karaoke' Episodes With Jon Hamm, Ed Helms & More Coming to Apple Music," 11 June 2018
Cage gets exactly one meme-able meltdown scene, about two-thirds of the way through the picture.

— noel murray, latimes.com, "The Nicolas Cage police thriller '211' can't match his intensity," 7 June 2018
The kiss may be the only scene from the royal wedding that has been turned into lip art, but that doesn't mean there weren't plenty of other meme-worthy moments that went down on Saturday.

— zoë weiner, Teen Vogue, "Makeup Artist Creates Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Royal Wedding Lip Art," 21 May 2018
Meanwhile, the avocado continued to manifest itself in meme-worthy ways.

— margaret lin, Curbed, "The avocado toast home ownership meme, explained," 15 May 2018
The inescapable, infinitely meme-able anthem exploded thanks in part to current zeitgeist monopolizer Donald Glover, who praised both the act and their track in an acceptance speech at the 2017 Golden Globes.

— molly eichel, Philly.com, "If there's one hip hop trio that would survive the apocalypse, it'd be Migos," 15 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'meme.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, British scientist Richard Dawkins defended his newly coined word meme, which he defined as "a unit of cultural transmission." Having first considered, then rejected, "mimeme," he wrote: "‘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.’" (The suitable Greek root was mim-, meaning "mime" or "mimic." The English suffix -eme indicates a distinctive unit of language structure, as in "grapheme," "lexeme," and "phoneme.") "Meme" itself, like any good meme, caught on fairly quickly, spreading from person to person as it established itself in the language.

Origin and Etymology of meme

alteration of mimeme, from mim- (as in mimesis) + -eme

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 1976

in the meaning defined at sense 1

See Words from the same year

MEME Defined for English Language Learners

meme

noun

Definition of meme for English Language Learners

: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from one person to another in a culture
: an amusing or interesting picture, video, etc., that is spread widely through the Internet