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Theme vs Meme - What's the difference?

theme | meme |

As nouns the difference between theme and meme

is that theme is a subject of a talk or an artistic piece; a topic while meme is any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another in a comparable way to the transmission of genes.

As a verb theme

is to apply a theme to; to change the visual appearance and/or layout of (software).

theme

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A subject of a talk or an artistic piece; a topic.
  • A recurring idea; a motif.
  • (music) The main melody of a piece of music, especially one that is the source of variations.
  • (film, television) A song, or a snippet of a song, that identifies a film, a TV program, a character, etc. by playing at the appropriate time.
  • (computing, figuratively) The collection of color schemes, sounds, artwork etc., that "skin" an environment towards a particular motif.
  • (grammar) The stem of a word
  • (linguistics) thematic relation of a noun phrase to a verb
  • (linguistics) Theta role in generative grammar and government and binding theory.
  • (linguistics) Topic, what is generally being talked about, as opposed to rheme
  • A regional unit of organisation in the Byzantine empire.
  • Verb

    (them)
  • (computing) To apply a theme to; to change the visual appearance and/or layout of (software).
  • meme

    English

    (wikipedia meme)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another in a comparable way to the transmission of genes.
  • *1976 , (Richard Dawkins), The Selfish Gene :
  • *:Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.
  • *2002 , Rita Carter, Exploring Consciousness , p. 242:
  • *:Related memes tend to form mutually supporting meme-complexes such as religions, political ideologies, scientific theories, and New Age dogmas.
  • (Internet, slang) Something that is copied and circulated online with slight adaptions, including quizzes, basic pictures, video templates etc. A meme can be a photo or artwork, usually with text, often codified with a distinct white block lettering text on the image. If a particular, standardized image is used, there is a protocol to how it should be used
  • * 2005 , "darklily", OT: Livejournal'' (discussion on Internet newsgroup ''soc.sexuality.general )
  • I do...but my journal is a mess. It's mostly filled with memes and my bitching about a house I am building.
  • *2012 , Greg Jarboe, You Tube and Video Marketing , 2nd edition:
  • *:The idea was to append Keyboard Cat to the end of a blooper video to "play" that person offstage after a mistake or gaffe, like getting the hook in the days of vaudeville. The meme became popular, Ashton Kutcher tweeted about it to more than 1 million followers, and more than 4,000 such videos have now been made.
  • *2013 , The Guardian , (headline), 8 Feb 2013:
  • *:Harlem Shake meme : the new Gangnam Style?
  • Derived terms

    * memedom * memome * memeplex * meme pool * memetic * memetic algorithm * memetic engineering * memetics

    See also

    * culturgen * email forward * replicator