how do you use the word “meta”. I hear it all the time and no one that I ask knows what it means.

Question

how do you use the word “meta”. I hear it all the time and no one that I ask knows what it means.

In: Other

Answer 1

The word has its origins as a Greek prefix, which you can learn about from Etymonline here: [https://www.etymonline.com/word/meta-](https://www.etymonline.com/word/meta-)

In current usage, it is used to indicate a quality of self-referentialness, which seems to be from the word “metacognition”, which is a word for thinking about thinking. The way that I would use the term would be to say that, for example, a video game’s plot could be really “meta” if it were to, for example, break the fourth wall in referring to previous versions of the game.