I often see or hear references to the prefix "meta" attached to various things. Over the years, I have come to wonder if this isn't a fun word people attach to stuff that is so zen, or cool, or abstract, or circular. I spent some time working out what I thought it was, and then didn't think much more about it exceptionally to occasionally wonder "I do not thing you really know what the word means."

This evening, feeling somewhat random, I thought I'd go look up a definition. The Free Online Dictionary of Computing put it very well I thought:

Basically, a simple test is to to place the word "about" between the word repeated and see if it works. Metaclass is a Class about a Class. Metaobject (protocol) are objects that are about objects. So on. A "Metablog" by this definition is a blog where someone blogs about blogging. Not an automated collection of blogs. That's just a blog of blogs.

How do you use the term?