meme

The term "meme" (pronounced MEEM), coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins,

refers to a replicator of cultural information that one mind transmits (verbally

or by demonstration) to another mind. Dawkins said, Examples of memes are

tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.

 

Other examples include deities, concepts, ideas, theories, opinions, beliefs,

practices, habits, dances and moods which propagate within a culture. A meme

propagates itself as a unit of cultural evolution analogous in many ways to the gene

(the unit of genetic information).