Pronounce Meme
Are you one of the millions of Internet users who enjoys their daily stream of "meme" content while harboring a dark secret: that you don't know how to actually pronounce "meme?" Don't worry — according to the Oxford English Dictionary (and many other sources), the correct pronunciation for "meme" is "meem" (rhymes with "team"). Now you can comment on the latest online content IRL without fear of embarrassment!
Steps
- Say "meem," with a long e sound. As noted above, the word "meme" is pronounced so that it rhymes with "team" or "beam." To pronounce the word, make an "m" sound, then make a long "e" sound, then finish with another "m" sound. That's all there is to it!
- The two keys to pronouncing "meme" correctly are:
- Use only one syllable.
- Always use the long e sound, never the short e sound or an a sound.
- Learn the mnemonic for remembering the correct pronunciation. Have you pronounced "meme" incorrectly for so long that it's become tricky for you to remember the right way to say it? Don't worry — with an easy mnemonic (a learning trick), it's simple to remember the correct pronunciation. See below:
- Start with the spelling of the word: "Meme."
- Re-arrange the last two letters to get "Meem."
- Sound out "meem" as written to get the proper pronunciation.
- Avoid the most common pronunciation mistakes. Now that you know how you should say "meme," it's valuable to learn how not to say it so that you instruct others in the proper pronunciation. In general, you should not pronounce "meme" so that it has two syllables and you should not pronounce "meme" with any vowel sound other than the long "e" sound. This means:
- Don't say "maymay," "meemee," or "meemuh."
- Don't say "maim" or "mehm."
- Learn the word's etymology to understand why it's pronounced this way. If "meme" strikes you as a word that's somewhat unnatural, you're right. The word was actually created in the mid-1970s by famous author and researcher Richard Dawkins (who, additionally, verified that it should be pronounced to rhyme with "cream.") In Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene, he introduces the idea of "memes" as essentially genes in information form. Just like a particular set of genes replicates itself through reproduction, a meme propagates itself whenever a new person encounters the idea, accepts it, and starts to share it with others. Since Dawkins based the idea of the "meme" off of biological genes, he deliberately chose a word that was pronounced similarly to "gene."
- Think of your favorite online memes — probably mostly comics, funny pictures, and so on. Isn't the way that this content spreads from user to user "virally" via social media and sharing a little bit like the way biological genes are spread? Doesn't it make sense that they'd be compared in this way and that "meme" would have a similar-sounding name to "gene?"
Tips
- Not sure what a meme is in today's terms? Try browsing knowyourmeme.com, a repository of all of the Internet's meme content, for many great examples.
- One of Dawkins' colleagues, N.K. Humphrey, gives a good explanation for what a meme is: "... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell ... the meme for, say, "belief in life after death" is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over."
