Meme vs. Trope — What's the Difference?

A meme ( MEEM) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme.

A figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression

An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.

A figure of speech using words in nonliteral ways, such as a metaphor.

An image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.

A word or phrase interpolated as an embellishment in the sung parts of certain medieval liturgies.

A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

A theme, motif, plot, or literary device that commonly recurs within a genre or work of fiction, especially when considered clichéd

An image or short video clip, often accompanied by a humorous saying or popular catchphrase, that is transmitted virally, especially on social media.

An often recurring idea or image

A humorous saying or popular catchphrase that is transmitted virally, especially as a caption for such an image or video clip.

Something recurring across a genre or type of art or literature, such as the ‘mad scientist’ of horror movies or the use of the phrase ‘once upon a time’ as an introduction to fairy tales; a motif.

(originally) Any unit of (originally 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.

(medieval Christianity) An addition (of dialogue, song, music, etc.) to a standard element of the liturgy, serving as an embellishment.

(Internet) Media, usually humorous, which is copied and circulated online with slight adaptations, such as basic pictures, video templates, etc.

(rhetoric) A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.

(Internet) A specific instance of a meme, such as an image macro or a video, often with humorous superimposed text.

(geometry) Mathematical senses.

Something not to be taken seriously; a joke.

A tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic.

Granny; nana

(archaic) The reciprocal of a node on a surface.

To create and use humorous memes.

(music) Musical senses.

To turn into a meme; to use a meme, especially to achieve a goal in real life.

A short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music.

To joke around.

A pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.

A cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation);

(Judaism) A cantillation pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.

(philosophy) Philosophical senses.

(Greek philosophy) Any of the ten arguments used in skepticism to refute dogmatism.

(metaphysics) A particular instance of a property (such as the specific redness of a rose), as contrasted with a universal.

(transitive) To use, or embellish something with, a trope.

(transitive) Senses relating chiefly to art or literature.

To represent something figuratively or metaphorically, especially as a literary motif.

To turn into, coin, or create a new trope.

To analyse a work in terms of its literary tropes.

(intransitive) To think or write in terms of tropes.

The use of a word or expression in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it; the use of a word or expression as changed from the original signification to another, for the sake of giving life or emphasis to an idea; a figure of speech.

Language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense