meme

noun

ˈmēm 

1

: 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

2

: 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

memetic

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

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.” (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.) Like any good meme, meme caught on and evolved, eventually developing the meaning known to anyone who spends time online, where it’s most often used to refer to any one of those silly captioned photos that the Internet can’t seem to get enough of.

Examples of meme in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Though not everyone was able to secure presale tickets, many still made light of the situation online, sparking a wave of memes related to the frenzy. —Francie Ebert, NBC news, 4 June 2026

Better known by her pseudonymous social media handle Jerry Gogosian, Helphenstein left behind a complicated legacy, puncturing art world pieties with both satirical and serious memes and occasionally making inflammatory statements. —Harrison Jacobs, ARTnews.com, 3 June 2026

Though his lowlights are often meme-worthy online, most of the advanced statistics – such as win shares, value over replacement player and box-plus-minus – paint Podziemski as a positive contributor even on last season’s struggling team. —Joseph Dycus, Mercury News, 2 June 2026

Attaching a song to an existing popular meme format, dance, or repeatable caption structure with which people are already engaging. —Wyatt Williams, Harpers Magazine, 2 June 2026

Word History

Etymology

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

First Known Use

1976, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Phrases Containing meme

• meme coin
• meme stock

Rhymes for meme

• beam
• bream
• cream
• creme
• deem
• dream
• gleam
• ream
• scheme
• scream
• seam
• seem

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Kids Definition

meme

noun

ˈmēm 

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