Trending: ‘meta’

Lookups spiked 59,000% on October 28, 2021

Why are people looking up meta?

Meta spiked in lookups on October 28th, 2021, after a large company (one which has undergone a recent spate of less-than-stellar press) announced that this word would be its new name.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday at his company’s Connect event that its new name will be Meta.
— Kim Lyons, The Verge, 28 Oct. 2021

What does meta mean?

Meta has a variety of meanings, as an adjective and as a prefix. In the role of the former it may mean “showing or suggesting an explicit awareness of itself or oneself as a member of its category : cleverly self-referential” or “concerning or providing information about members of its own category.” Both of these senses are considered informal.

As a prefix meta- can carry such meanings as “change, transformation,” “after,” or “derived from by loss of water.”

Citations

Guys with weird names, girls with creepy tattoos and a splintered universe form the core of this novel that's so meta it loses itself to its own cleverness.
— Kirkuys Reviews, 15 Jun. 2011

Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.