Word Memes

It originated from dawkins s 1976 book the selfish gene.

Word memes. A meme is something such as a video picture or phrase that a lot of people send to. The word was then abbreviated to just meme due to its similarity to the word gene dawkins coined the term because he was trying to figure out whether there was a measurable unit describing how ideas spread and propagated through generations. Open any social media profile and you re bound to see one. Meme as we most often encounter it these days is used to refer to an amusing or interesting item such as a captioned picture.

He said that the new meaning isn t that far from his original explanation. Is there a way to tell who was the very first person to put words on a photo of chef gordon ramsey or turn some lines into a heart rate that spread all. Decades later dawkins supported the appropriation of the word meme into the digital world. But where do memes come from.

The word meme is both a noun and a verb and it s taken the internet by storm in recent years. Say the word meme and the average english speaker is likely to have any variety of images spring to their mind perhaps a photo of a furious baby with a caption about some indignity of corporate life or an image of a voluminous cat who is clearly having none of it. So put simply a meme is to an idea what a gene is to a physical trait. The word meme is a neologism coined by richard dawkins.

Meaning pronunciation translations and examples. Humphrey s suggestion that memes should be considered as living structures not just metaphorically 12 and proposed to regard memes as physically residing in the. Meme definition is an idea behavior style or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture. Dawkins s own position is somewhat ambiguous.

However internet users of all ages and all levels of. The word meme came from the greek word mimeme which means imitated thing.