Mispronouncing the word meme (meem)
Sunday, 12 March 2006 | 491 readers so far
If you caught my Talk Radio News Interview, you’ll hear me mispronounce the word meme. SGT Jeff Lowry, my roommate here in Iraq, was kind enough to correct me. Here is the history of the word; it’s interesting.
meme \MEEM\ noun
: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture
Example sentence:
“Blogs are an interesting way… of seeing which ideas, memes, trends and news events are getting the most comment.” (Clive Thompson, quoted in the Sunday Tribune, February 6, 2005)
“Blogs are an interesting way… of seeing which ideas, memes, trends and news events are getting the most comment.” (Clive Thompson, quoted in the Sunday Tribune, February 6, 2005)
Did you know?
In 1976, British scientist Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, and in his book he defended his new creation, the word “meme.” 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.” Dawkins’s “mimeme” was formed from “mim-” plus “-eme,” an English noun suffix that indicates a distinctive unit of language structure (as in “grapheme,” “lexeme,” and “phoneme”). “Meme” itself, like a good meme, caught on pretty quickly, spreading from person to person as it established itself in the language.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
1 March 13th, 2006 at 6:45 am
Mary*Ann says:
Did not know that, nor the correct pronunciation…thanks. Frequently when faced with that uncertainty (and my own laziness) I will not use a word till I hear it pronounced. Example: Goethe…heard it pronounced while listening to a talk on the cultural gardens here in Cleveland. The one that really has me is Dagny from Atlas Shrugged, read it for the first time 30 years ago.. pretty sure its phonetic…but have never heard it pronounced…the only people I know that have read the book, I have only “met” on line. So, don’t feel bad about your mispronunciation.
2 March 13th, 2006 at 7:36 am
Trevor says:
It’s ironic you bring up Ayn Rand’s novel, because I used to mispronounce her name, which many people pronounce Ann, but which I’ve heard pronounced exactly as it is spelled.
Thanks for encouraging me not to feel bad about mispronouncing. I just like being correct.
3 June 28th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
shana says:
Ayn is pronounced hard I like eye with an n at the end