Today, the word “meme” usually brings to mind a funny picture with a caption, a viral video or a joke that seems to show up everywhere online. But the term was around decades before social media, and it originally described something much broader than a shareable image. Its creator even borrowed inspiration from another familiar word when coming up with the name.
Read on to learn how “meme” got its name and how its meaning changed over time.
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How Did the Word ‘Meme’ Get Its Name?
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The word “meme” was coined by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He wanted a name for a unit of cultural information that spreads from person to person through imitation, much as genes pass biological information from one generation to the next.
Dawkins initially considered the Greek-derived word “mimeme,” meaning “something which is imitated.” But he wanted a shorter word that sounded like “gene,” so he dropped the first syllable and created “meme.” In The Selfish Gene, he explained that he wanted “a monosyllable that sounds a bit like gene,” according to Merriam-Webster, which also traces the word’s etymology to “mimeme.”
The name reflects the idea behind Dawkins’ theory: Just as genes replicate and spread through biological populations, memes replicate and spread through cultures. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes a meme as a unit of cultural information passed along through imitation, drawing the same comparison between cultural and biological evolution.
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What Did ‘Meme’ Originally Mean?
When Dawkins introduced the word, he wasn’t talking about funny pictures or viral videos. He used “meme” to describe any idea, behavior or cultural practice that could be copied and passed from one person to another.
His examples in The Selfish Gene included “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.” A song someone learns from a friend, a popular style of dress or a familiar saying passed between generations could all qualify as memes under his original definition.
In other words, a meme didn’t have to be funny, visual or even connected to entertainment. The central idea was that it spread through imitation. As Merriam-Webster notes, the original sense refers to an “idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.”
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When Did ‘Meme’ Start Referring to Internet Content?
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The internet gave the word a more specific meaning. It gradually became associated with digital content that people share, copy and adapt, including captioned images, jokes, GIFs and videos.
One early recorded use of the newer meaning appeared in a 1998 CNN segment about the Dancing Baby, a computer-generated animation that had become popular after appearing on Ally McBeal. A Wired reporter called it a “net meme,” according to Wordorigins.org.
The familiar format of a recognizable image paired with changing captions gained traction later. Wordorigins traces the growing popularity of that style to the spread of the “I Can Has Cheezburger?” cat image in 2007.
The modern meaning is narrower than Dawkins’ original concept, but it still follows the same basic principle: An idea or piece of content spreads because people imitate, share or adapt it. A meme can change as it moves from one person to another, much like the cultural information Dawkins described decades before today’s internet culture.
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Was the Word ‘Meme’ Inspired by ‘Memory’?
In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins also associated the term “meme” with the English word “memory” or the French word même, meaning “same.” Those were additional ways to think about the name, however, not the primary derivation.
The word’s documented origin is as a shortened form of “mimeme,” based on a Greek root associated with imitation. The resemblance to “gene” was intentional, reflecting Dawkins’ effort to describe how cultural ideas can spread in a way that resembles biological replication.
How Do You Pronounce ‘Meme’?
The correct pronunciation of “meme” is “meem,” rhyming with “dream.” Both the American and British pronunciations are the same, according to the Cambridge Dictionary.
If you spent time on internet forums in the late 2000s, you might remember another version: “maymay.” The deliberately incorrect pronunciation showed up in online videos and forum discussions in 2009, according to Know Your Meme. It later became an ironic way to poke fun at people who didn’t know much about internet culture.
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What Is Memetics?
Memetics is an approach to understanding cultural change through the spread of ideas, habits and other things people learn from one another. It looks at why certain beliefs, customs, skills or expressions catch on and continue to be passed along, while others gradually disappear.
The theory grew out of Richard Dawkins’ comparison between biological evolution and the way cultural information travels between people. In this framework, a meme can be repeated, modified and combined with other cultural influences as it spreads.
Researchers have explored whether principles borrowed from evolutionary biology can help explain how culture develops. But memetics remains controversial. One challenge is that cultural learning doesn’t always involve faithful copying: People can interpret what they encounter, change it or blend it with something they already know. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that memetics has attracted public interest but has not gained broad acceptance as a scientific theory.
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When Was ‘Meme’ Coined?
The word “meme” was coined in 1976 by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. He used it to describe cultural ideas and behaviors that spread from person to person through imitation, drawing a comparison with how genes replicate.
What Is Another Word for ‘Meme’?
There isn’t one perfect synonym for “meme,” since the word can describe different things. When referring to something shared online, alternatives include “viral image,” “online joke” or “viral post.” In its original sense, the word can be replaced by terms such as “idea,” “cultural trend” or “shared behavior.”
The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary recognizes both the internet and cultural meanings, while Thesaurus.com lists related words including “trend,” “fad,” “concept” and “idea.”
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This article was drafted with the assistance of AI and thoroughly reviewed, edited and fact-checked by Parade editors. See our complete AI Policy.