Word.ws English Dictionary

mimeme

mimeme noun: a unit of mimetic information.

Noun

mimeme (plural mimemes)

  1. A unit of mimetic information.
    • Speech learning is a mimetic process. The linguistic signal is a ‘mimeme’.1955, Leonard Robert Palmer, Achaeans and Indo-Europeans: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford on 4 November 1954, page 8
    • Language depends on mimism – the repercussion, in the composition of an individual’s gestures, of ocular mimemes – which takes two forms: phonomimism and cinemimism.1978, Ted Polhemus, editor, The Body Reader: Social Aspects of the Human Body, →ISBN, page 276

Forms of mimeme

pluralmimemes

Origin of mimeme

Anglicized as if from a noun derived from Ancient Greek μῑμέομαι (mīméomai) with the deverbal suffix -μα (-ma), from μῖμος (mîmos, “imitation, copy”). By surface analysis, mime + -eme.

Words formed from mimeme

Questions about mimeme

What does mimeme mean?
Mimeme means a unit of mimetic information.
What part of speech is mimeme?
Mimeme is a noun.
What is the plural of mimeme?
The plural of mimeme is mimemes.

Words near mimeme in the dictionary

  1. mime
  2. mime out
  3. mimecan
  4. mimed
  5. mimelike
  6. mimeme
  7. mimemes
  8. mimeo
  9. mimeo.
  10. mimeoed
  11. mimeograph

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mimeme (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “mimeme.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mimeme. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.