1. referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential
Usage: informal; often used in internet culture and media criticism

1. denoting a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to mean of a higher or second-order kind
Usage: technical; used in academic and scientific contexts

Examples

• The movie was very meta, with characters discussing the plot while it was happening.
• That joke about making jokes was pretty meta.
• The author wrote a meta-commentary on his own work.
• Metadata provides information about other data.
• Philosophy includes metaphysics, the study of reality itself.
• The meta-analysis combined results from multiple studies.