A unit of culture that copies itself, named to rhyme with gene, then eaten alive by the internet it predicted.
Documented
Mimeme, shortened on purpose
Richard Dawkins coined meme in The Selfish Gene in 1976, cutting mimeme, Greek for imitation, down to one syllable to echo gene. Tunes, fashions, and phrases were his examples: anything that copies itself brain to brain.
Assessment: Documented coinage with a stated recipe. One of the few words with a known birth certificate.
Stories
The internet narrowed it
Online, meme shrank to mean the shareable captioned image, the format of the week. Dawkins himself later commented that the internet usage was surprisingly close to his intent, only sharper.
Assessment: The semantic narrowing is documented in real time. Even the coiner signed off.
Interesting claims
The word obeyed its own definition
The observation too neat to ignore: meme mutated under selection pressure, spread, and adapted to its environment, becoming the most successful self-demonstrating word in the language.
Assessment: Rhetoric, but rigorous rhetoric. The word is its own case study, which would please its maker.
Sources and further reading
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976), chapter 11
Dawkins's 2013 comments on internet usage
Oxford English Dictionary, meme
Greek mimeme, imitation, standard references
Worth asking
If a word can evolve, what else in your vocabulary is a living thing?