Talk:Meta (prefix)/Archive 2

meta - wikipedia
Added Wikipedia, as I sought it searching 'meta'. Seems a link to meta.wikimedia.org may even be more appropriate, would offsite links fly here? -Here 08:25, 20 January 2005 (UTC)

Meaning of meta
I thought this word ment "beyond". Is there any suport for that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.89.205.98 (talk • contribs) 15:05, 28 April 2005 (UTC)

Inscrutable content
This is inscrutable stuff:

We read: Meta a direction orthogonal to x,y and z. So it's singular. Meta is the axes formed by what Rucker and others often refer to as Ana and Kata. So it's plural. Which? And who "Rucker and others", and in what context? We read: Data about or processes operating on in the Hypercomputing Dictionary. Data about what, and processes operating on what? And what's the "Hypercomputing Dictionary"? We read: To 'go meta' is to step orthogonally to the situation in order to grok additional layers of information that are affecting the decision making process. What does "step orthogonally to the situation" mean? -- Hoary 06:22, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)


 * No answer yet, so I'm deleting this material. -- Hoary 12:32, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

Hofstadter
I have a suspicion that the use of this prefix to indicate an extra layer of description was introduced by Douglas Hofstadter in his book [Godel Escher Bach] - does anyone know if it was used this way earlier? It certainly popularised it anyway. Theusername 13:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Certainly not! The OED cites usage in this manner from as far back as 1941. --dmd 02:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Restructure meta, meta- and metacorder
I've had a look at these three articles. Theres a confusion in that there wasn't a clear distinction between disambiguation and article (somewhat appropriately for a meta-subject!)

The article on meta- was intended to be disambiguation but this was very blurry, many "meta" words don't have a hyphen.

So I have split it this way:


 * Meta (disambiguation) covers all disambiguation aspects
 * Meta explains the term and its meaning.
 * Meta- is a redirect page
 * Metacorder is merged into meta (as per talk:Metacorder).

Looks cleaner to me this way. FT2 (Talk 19:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Removed recent unsourced paragrah
I am moving the following unsourced section here. - brenneman  {L} 03:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC) While the preposition meta has been widely used in other academic and non-academic fields, perhaps its greatest modern exponent would be the modern academy and, specifically, the field of Classical studies. Postmodernists of the 90s and the 21st century interested in pushing the boundaries of literary criticism and authorial intent have coined such terms as metanarrative and metapoetics which have long become familiar to scholars in the field. More recently, however, the term has shed its nominal trappings and, with little or no association to the parallel phenomenon evinced in Hofstadter's work, has begun to appear on its own to signify a certain distancing or ambiguity in the perception of reality. (Thus: "This argument is meta" signifies a surreal debate and "He is so meta" is equivalent to "He is so out there"). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aaron Brenneman (talk • contribs) 03:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Meta in Classical Studies

Question as a caption?
An encyclopedia should never ask questions to the reader. The answers should be given to the reader, and nothing more. The caption of the license plate picture is "What interpretations can you derive?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benzi455 (talk • contribs) 20:31, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Opposite of meta?
What word or prefix can mean the opposite of meta? I am looking for a word that might be analagous to this> "micro" is to "macro" as "x" is to "meta" Any ideas? Katyism 20:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If you look at some old versions of the page with the stuff deleted below, you'll see that Rucker has proposed "kata" (greek "down", contrast with meta=after) for something like this, but he's pretty alone. Since "meta" usually refers to some sort of abstraction, the opposite would be something like "concrete" or "literal".--Homunq 10:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Meta does not mean about
I am Greek and I can assure you that Meta does not mean about. Some might say that Metadata is data about data but this does not mean that meta means about. Meta means after. I am removing the about translation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.192.38.242 (talk • contribs) 09:44, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Things do change meaning, but I'm surprised, especially from someone with a background in a classical language, to use "data" as a singular. 171.71.37.203 18:08, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Metabolism

 * Edit: nevermind. Didn't see the subsequent list.** —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.181.209.108 (talk) 00:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Metabolism should be on the list of words that utilize the Greek root 'meta.' Numerous sources can confirm this, including http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metabolism. Not sure why it was removed in the first place, but considering it is among the most relevant of the list, it certainly deserves mention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.181.209.108 (talk) 00:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

"metaposting" and "metanomic"
I searched the Oxford English Dictionary Online for "metaposting" and "metanomic", but neither word was included. Also, neither word returned more than a thousand results on google. I felt that such esoteric words should be removed, so I did. Tigerford (talk) 18:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Meta ions?
I've seen chemistry pages mention meta ions many times, but I've never once seen a page on them. Does anyone know where one would be?RSido 00:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I suspect a missing 'l', or else we're talking about carbocations of the arenes.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.40.81.193 (talk) 15:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Metaplacebo
The significance of metaplacebo is not obvious. -- Hoary (talk) 00:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This is the only contribution by M. Oskar van Deventer, and he wrote the paper. Google search reveals very few (ca. 300) results, so the relevance is not high as it is not (at least not yet) a notable term. The previous stand-alone article was flagged as a COI, and a neologism (among others), and speedy deleted on 18 July 2008. I have removed the reference. Cpmartin (talk) 17:14, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

"metadata are data about data"
Shouldn't that be "is data"? Something about it sounds wrong. 98.15.213.206 (talk) 01:12, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

According to this, it may depend where you live. In the UK, for example, it's still correct to say "Data are":http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/data

However, I've lived inthe UK my entire life and I still say "Data is", and the article itself admits that the language is in the process of changing in regards to this, so you might be more correct with "metadata is".

157.203.255.1 (talk) 09:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The term "more correct" isn't very helpful. Both are used frequently, and different people have different preferences.  The only relevant question is which of the two options is least likely to look odd.  I'd guess that "data is" is now the dominant form, so will look less unusual to the majority of readers.  But it really doesn't matter much.  As I say, both are used.  It's not a matter of "correctness". garik (talk) 10:06, 15 March 2010 (UTC)


 * "Are" is correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.83.236.101 (talk) 07:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Talking about talking
I like the idea-definition of taking about talking. Any use here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.248.132 (talk) 23:03, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Metapod
I fail to see how "Metapod" is a meta word. It just has "meta" at the beginning. It isn't a pod-within-a-pod, or something that underlies the concept of a pod. It's a sodding pokemon.

That said it's probably quite a useful link for playing six degrees of separation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.6.96.22 (talk) 22:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

question,about the name [meta].
I read in a book ten years ago written by a guy who worked with Nixon doing whitewater ,in his book the name meta was also a biblical term meaning [change,in different,chosen]. have any one else heard this saying???? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.176.0.184 (talk) 03:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Second paragraph of the introduction
The first sentence of the second paragraph of the introduction needed to aspire to better grammatical number agreement. Prior to my edit it read:


 * "For example, metadata is data about data (who has produced them, when, what format the data are in and so on)."

I've gone ahead and changed it to read:


 * "For example, metadata are data about data (who has produced them, when, what format the data are in and so on)."

which is my preferred solution. Another solution would be:


 * "For example, metadata is data about data (who has produced it, when, what format the data is in and so on)."

If you don't like my solution or the alternative I've described then please reply to this post with your own solution. Schlemazl (talk) 22:32, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to include a history of meta/first recorded use of each meta-X.
When was the first recorded meta-concept? The first recorded meta-story? The first recorded meta-film? etc. I think would be a fascinating addition to this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.142.83.254 (talk) 23:27, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Etymology section
I've extended the etymology section, and reworded what was there already, to explain how the prefix came to have its modern meaning in English. It is, after all, an interesting story. The use of the term "back-formation" in the original section implies a failure to understand what a back-formation actually is (or at least gave no indication of how it was one). More importantly I removed the following:

Meta- & Meso- are thought to have come into Greek together from a mutual cognate, which would further imply 'meta' to contain or be of the meaning "parallel".

I think there may be something useful to be said here, but what was written seems very unclear. What, after all, is meant by "mutual cognate" (cogantes are inherently mutual) and how does this imply the meaning "parallel"? Unfortunately, I don't have a copy to hand of Partridge's dictionary. If anyone does, could they please make clear what was meant? Then we could reinstate the above if it's useful to do so. Thanks. garik (talk) 11:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC) modified by garik (talk) 19:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Would someone like to tackle the potentially funny but also potentially long winded subject of explaining to whoever added a Citation Needed flag at the end of this section? It's actually kind of amusing. Might even make a good example in and of itself (or would that run the risk the actually ending up with a "citation needed" flag itself?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.44.161 (talk) 20:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Traditional meaning
I think the statement under the heading "Traditional Meaning" ("In Greek, the prefix meta- is generally less esoteric than in English; Greek meta- is equivalent to the Latin words post- or ad-") is not correct.

Meta in classical Greek (in contrast to its quite different use in modern Greek) is not equivalent to the Latin post- or ad-. The primary meaning of meta in ancient Greek is not "after" or "toward" but "in the midst of, among, between". It has a number of different meanings, depending on context, the case of object when used as a preposition, and so forth. Only one of these (and a tertiary one not often found in Greek classical literature at that) is even approximately synonymous with the Latin post or ad.

See the Lidell and Scott Greek Dictionary definition of μετά for an authoritative reference.

I have not attempted to do any editing here at this time, only to post this comment for discussion.

Hopefully someone with deeper knowledge of ancient Greek than mine will step in.

However, if no one does, I may eventually venture an edit on my own, but only after a bit more research on the matter.

One reason why this is relevant is the commonly repeated statement that Aristotle's "Metaphysics" was originally named such simply because it was "after the physics." See, for example, the Wikipedia article on metaphysics. This notion is based the supposed equivalence of meta with the Latin post -- clearly, at best, a greatly over-simplified (if not downright wrong) assumption, per Liddel and Scott.

Canopusresearch (talk) 18:19, 28 July 2014 (UTC)