meme: M-W's Word of the Day

This is sure to start a blogging firestorm. I've considered the word
'meme' to be pronounced "me-me" and to be used more as an expression about
oneself rather than something moving from person to person. While this
definition shown below certainly fits, I'm going to have a hard time using
the pronunciation "meem".

I'm also going to have to re-think the assumption that when I'm tagged
people really want to know about me. I guess it's as Dr. Phil says: "IT'S
NOT ABOUT YEWW!!" (At least that's what I'm led to believe he says by the
fine folks at Bob & Tom's morning show.)

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The Word of the Day for August 18
is:

meme \MEEM\ noun
: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person
within a culture

Example sentence:
"Blogs are an interesting way... of seeing which ideas, memes, trends and
news events are getting the most comment." (Clive Thompson, quoted in the
_Sunday Tribune_, February 6, 2005)

Did you know?
In 1976, British scientist Richard Dawkins wrote _The Selfish Gene_, and in
his book he defended his new creation, the word "meme." Having first
considered, then rejected, "mimeme," he wrote: "'Mimeme' comes from a
suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like
'gene.' I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate
'mimeme' to 'meme.'" The suitable Greek root was "mim-," meaning "mime" or
"mimic." Dawkins's "mimeme" was formed from "mim-" plus "-eme," an English
noun suffix that indicates a distinctive unit of language structure (as in
"grapheme," "lexeme," and "phoneme"). "Meme" itself, like a good meme,
caught on pretty quickly, spreading from person to person as it established
itself in the language.

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