meme
Americannoun
-
memes
plural
verb (used without object)
verb (used with object)
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of meme
First recorded in 1976; coined by British evolutionary biologist C. Richard Dawkins (born 1941), shortening of Dawkins's original creation mimeme, which was based on Greek mī́mēma “imitation, copy; artistic representation,” but which Dawkins also wanted to look and sound like gene; cf. mimesis ( def. )
Explanation
A meme is an idea or habit that's passed between people and generations through imitation. An example of a meme is the cultural tradition of women wearing skirts. A cultural idea, value, habit, or even something like a tune is a meme if it is picked up from someone else. A meme, which is pronounced "meem," will change over time, like younger kids who want to wear the exact same clothes but who eventually develop their own, though similar, styles. Recently, meme has become commonly used to refer to Internet memes — pictures, videos, or even slang words that are shared between Internet users.
Vocabulary lists containing meme
The Hate U Give
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The Poet X
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This Week in Pop Culture: December 8 -14, 2018
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On election night, when Bass was starting to trail Raman in the vote count, Montemayor posted the meme again.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 8, 2026
On Tuesday night, Kornacki inspired a meme simply by being captured on his new network’s Kornacki Cam as he walked down a hall.
From Salon ● Nov. 4, 2026
Mbappé, who reportedly made his remark about the meme on French talk show The Bridge, apologised later on Tuesday.
From BBC ● Nov. 2, 2026
And it warned about market distortions caused by factors it said were more akin to gambling than investing, including traders using zero-day options and betting on meme stocks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026
You can’t tell someone a secret in homeroom and not expect that it won’t be an internet meme by lunchtime.
From "Wayward Creatures" by Dayna Lorentz
This week I met two Silicon Valley execs and I asked them how they were processing the news - "in memes", was the response.
From BBC ● Nov. 12, 2026
GTA has become a cultural institution despite the criticism, with its content spawning countless online memes and fans around the world referencing its scenes and dialogue.
From Barron's ● Nov. 9, 2026
Social media was soon littered with memes of McAfee accompanied by rolls of a soft brand of bathroom tissue.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2026
On social media, the gleeful Portuguese-language memes escaped containment.
From Slate ● Oct. 26, 2026
Or a lame Twitter account where she retweets memes about the importance of hand washing.
From "Five Feet Apart" by Rachael Lippincott
“Time to meme like we have never memed before,” wrote Reddit user chance901.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 24, 2026
He memed his way through his campaign and bragged about “bullying” Gonzales.
From Slate ● Mar. 9, 2026
After Grimes and Musk split, he memed his way into being forced to buy Twitter for way too much money.
From Salon ● Nov. 7, 2025
By his own admission, it was a bold move, one that turned him into one of the most famously memed figures in India.
From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2025
And on Norfolk Island — a remote rock in the Pacific Ocean with about 2,000 residents and essentially no exports to the U.S. — a children’s book author memed a baffled-looking tropical wrasse fish.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 20, 2025
None of that has stopped Reddit and other corners of the web from celebrating and memeing the issue.
From Salon ● Oct. 15, 2026
As for the spoofing and memeing of the 60-second spot, Trotter said she and her colleagues just “can’t ignore it.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2025
In 2020 Sen. Ed Markey fended off his primary challenger—a young Kennedy!—by memeing himself into winning the youth vote.
From Slate ● Jan. 11, 2024
We said, 'No.' They didn't think of the impact that would have on how people would pick that up and start memeing it, and that's what happens with these things.
From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2022
“The internet is a very vibrant place, and I think a lot of the memeing and a lot of the nontraditional creativity that goes on is a good thing,” says Rose.
From The Verge ● Dec. 16, 2017
And when watching the series, there is no question about the skill of the team members, so I was initially a little shocked at the eventual meming of the show.
From Salon ● Feb. 4, 2020
On the left, we spend our time calling out and shutting down, lolling and meming and dropping mics.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 1, 2017
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
