word of the day for 8.18.05 meme

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)

In 1976, British scientist Richard Dawkins wrote "The Selfish Gene", and in which 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.