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Was “meme” a word in use in English in 1997 already? I first saw the word “meme” in 2006 or 2007 I think, and I never really thought about how long it may have
by codetrotter 6y ago
Was “meme” a word in use in English in 1997 already? I first saw the word “meme” in 2006 or 2007 I think, and I never really thought about how long it may have existed in English, I only know that it originates from a similar word in French, and that it means something like the spread of an idea.
- twright0 6y agoWikipedia gives credit to Dawkins for coining "meme" in 1976. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
- n4r9 6y agoYeah, there was a chapter dedicated to it if I recall. As if the book itself wasn't mind-blowing enough to a teenager.
- shevis 6y agoRichard Dawkins coined the term in his 1976 book titled The Selfish Gene. It was added to the dictionary by Merriam-Webster in 1998.
- pcurve 6y agoYou are right about the timing. Google trend indicates it didn’t really register until 2007
- xo5vik 6y agoTwo books from 1996: Brodie - Viruses of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme; Lynch - Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society
- tomgp 6y agoid doesn’t come from the french. it’s a cognate of gene, to get across the idea of information transmission
- sampo 6y ago> Was “meme” a word in use in English in 1997 already? I would assume so. Susan Blackmore's popular science book on memetics was published in 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meme_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meme_Machine
- bitwize 6y agoYes, except back then it was mainly used by the late 90s equivalent of the TED talk set. Richard Dawkins coined it in The Selfish Gene to refer to ideas that replicate and spread in the manner of genes.
- Avshalom 6y agoArchive.org has memepool goin back to at least 1998
- strathmeyer 6y ago"All Your Base Belong To Us" was called a meme in 1998, so people already knew what a meme was.
- Tarsul 6y ago"All your base are belong to us" you forgot the most important word :)