what does it mean to be “meta” about something?

Question

The title. I never understood that expression… can someone help?

Edit: auto correct on ‘someone’

In: 1694

Answer 1

Meta literally means “above”.

If you have a document on your computer, the metadata is: how big is it? When was it created? When was it modified? What user created it? What user modified it? When was it last accessed? What permissions are assigned to it?

If we are having a discussion and it turns into arguing about fallacies used in the discussion or grammar or anything about the discussion except for the content that we were discussing, that’s a meta discussion.

Etc.