meta

[Paul Frank]

Here's a word for your scholarly dissection: meta.

Perhaps the most meta moment of the week. In the episode, Charlie
drinks beer on the couch and jokes about his "$2500 date experiences,"
while preparing to go out with the well-preserved dermatologist who
"scraped a pre-cancerous mole off my ass."
    TV Guide, Oct 29, 2010

The event proved a mass demonstration of noncommittal cleverness,
quirk and irony. Through signage, some rally-goers competed to be the
most topical ("One man's socialism is another man's uninformed
buzzword"), the most off-topical ("I love pineapples") and the most
meta ("I am holding a sign").
  Washington Post, October 31.

"Meta moment" gets 23,000 googlits.

Paul

Paul Frank
Translator
Chinese, German, French, Italian > English
Espace de l'Europe 16
Neuchâtel, Switzerland
paulfrank at bfs.admin.ch
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org