Meta

How to spell meta

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce meta

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does meta mean?

1. adjectiveReferring to or commenting on itself or its own category, especially in a knowing, self-aware way.
2. nounThe set of tactics or choices currently considered most effective in a game or competitive activity.

Meta in a sentence

• adjective

  The film gets very meta when the actors start discussing the script.

• noun

  The latest patch completely changed the meta for ranked matches.

• adjective

  A documentary about making documentaries feels quite meta.

• noun

  Players studied the current meta before the tournament.

Where does meta come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes straight from the Greek meta, a preposition and prefix whose core sense was 'after', 'beyond', or 'alongside'. In classical and scientific compounds it lent the feeling of something occurring at a higher level or after the thing in question, as in 'metaphysics', a title that originally just meant the works of Aristotle placed after his writings on physics. From there the prefix drifted toward the idea of a thing that refers to or stands above its own category, giving learned coinages like 'metadata' (data about data) and 'metalanguage'. In the late twentieth century writers began clipping the prefix loose to use 'meta' as a free-standing adjective for anything self-referential, and in the twenty-first century gaming and online culture borrowed it again as a noun for the prevailing set of best tactics. Because it is short and phonetic, the spelling rarely troubles writers; the only real point to remember is the single 't' and the plain '-a' ending.

How the word is built

• meta (from Greek meta: after, beyond, among, alongside; in modern use the standalone word from the prefix meta-)