this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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Memes
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Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
- Wait at least 2 months before reposting
- No explicitly political content (about political figures, political events, elections and so on), !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca can be better place for that
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Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
- Odota ainakin 2 kuukautta ennen meemin postaamista uudelleen
- Ei selkeän poliittista sisältöä (poliitikoista, poliittisista tapahtumista, vaaleista jne) parempi paikka esim. !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- Merkitse K18-sisältö tarpeen mukaan
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I think language plays a factor in how you think.
When I think of the English word "Animal", I think of a picture of a deer or a cow in a textbook. When I think in Chinese, 动物, I extrapolate the meaning of the word, 动 which means "moving", and 物 meaning "object", 动物 = "moving object", so its easy to know what is and isn't a 动物 (animal), the word is self-explanatory.
I wonder if this causes a similar confusion about sea cucumbers and venus fly traps.
Tbf, when they coined those terms, they probably haven't discovered like most of the variety of species yet, but that was the best term they had at the time.
Edit: Also: Venus Fly Trap does not have legs to move. It technically does move, but it's still pretty much stationary relative to the ground. the 植 in 植物 (plants) basiclly includes the character 植, meaning "to plant"/"to establish", so anything within the 植物 category cannot relocate itself (excluding via reproduction, spreading seeds, which doesn't count for this purpose).
Also, doesn't sea cucumbers move? I mean, snails are animals, theres no confusion about that lol.
A lot of words in English are based on similar patterns, with roots in Latin or Greek. "Animal" isn't a compound example like 动物, but it does have a root in the Latin "anima", which has more of a spiritual basis.
Arguably also a little bit outdated, considering the discovery of phosphorous in pee and how it proved there was nothing fundamentally different about matter in living beings vs matter in inanimate objects.
Effectively both have more or less the same meaning, considering 'anima' is the same root for animate.
Problem with latin roots is that the root words don't really get used anymore, meanwhile the individual characters that compose Chinese words are still used and taught to this day.
True, English is kind of a monstrosity that blends in words from pretty much anywhere with no consistency to hold it all together.
But this word does have a classical root, and many scientific terms at least try to use a semblance of Latin and Greek structure in them (although they are very loose with the rules as well).