meme
n. a unit of practice or belief through which a society or culture evolves and that passes from one generation (or even one person) to the next. In this sense, the term—coined in 1976 by British biologist Richard Dawkins (1941– ) and derived from the Greek word for “imitation”—is a kind of metaphorical parallel to the term gene. Relatedly, an Internet meme is an idea (e.g., a word or phrase, hashtag, hyperlink, picture, or video), usually rooted in popular culture, that is widely popularized and distributed on the World Wide Web, for example, via social networks, blogs, e-mail, and news sources.