mémétique

adapted from English memetics, formed in the 1980s from the term meme (in French mème). This term was first proposed by Richard Dawkins in his work The Selfish Gene (1976), and it comes from the Ancient Greek (« copy »). In French, the two acute accents were adopted by usage, by analogy with the word genetics. The paronomasia with the French word même is said to be intentional.