http://mentalfloss.com/article/61843/what-is-a-meme

“In 1976, Richard Dawkins, the English evolutionary biologist, proposed an idea in his book, The Selfish Gene: What if ideas were like organisms, where they could breed and mutate? These ideas, he claimed, are actually the basis for human culture, and they are born in the brain.

Dawkins’s research is primarily in genetics. He has argued that all life relies on replication. But unlike cells, ideas do not rely on a chemical basis for survival. They begin from a single location—the brain—and spread outward, jumping from one vessel to another, battling for attention. Some ideas are more successful, which may be due to an element of truth they carry, while others slowly die out. Some may not be accurate, but society has accepted these ideas for so long that they are just accepted (think about pictures of Jesus or George Washington; while these may not be what they actually looked like, almost all art now portrays these men in the same way).

Dawkins needed a name for this concept. He proposed calling it mimeme, from the Greek word meaning “that which is replicated.” He wrote in his book, “I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.” He felt the monosyllabic word would be more fitting because it sounds similar to “gene.” “If it is any consolation,” he continued, “it could alternatively be thought of as being related to ‘memory,’ or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream.’””

54 Great Examples of Modern-Day Neologisms

The Washington Post Neologism Competition

Every year The Washington Post runs an annual competition in which the readers of the newspaper are asked to submit alternative meanings to existing words. The results are often extremely amusing. Here are examples of  Washington Post neologisms:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly
answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulance (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over
by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that when you die, your Soul flies up
onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

I ironed my tea towels and a shopping bag
The bag hid in the washing basket, see?
A Lowry picture  on it seems to sag

Ironing kills the germs but is a fag
But then I had a mug of boiling tea
I ironed my tea towels and a shopping bag

I am unable now to read a women’s mag.
I’m not a woman in that sense, not me!
That Lowry picture makes my spirits sag.

If you iron clothes they look neat, not bad!
And maybe heat will kill a lurking flea
I ironed my tea towels and a shopping bag

The pressed towels take less space.my mother nagged
I wish she were with me so she could see.
That Lowry picture makes my spirits sag.

My jeans were there but I forgot, oh, me!
I have wide trousers, what depravity!
I ironed my pillowcases and that bag.
A Lowry picture  on it seems to sag

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/jan/08/god-unknowable-faith

“Faith is not the progressive unearthing of God’s nature but a recognition that he/she is fundamentally unknowable. The signpost points not to growing certainty but towards increasing non-knowing. This is not as outrageous as it seems. An apophatic thread, a belief that the only way to conceive of God is through conceding that he is ineffable, runs throughout Christian history. Jan Van Ruysbroeck, the 14th century Augustinian and man of prayer, maintained that “God is immeasurable and incomprehensible, unattainable and unfathomable”. St John of the Cross, one of the pillars of western mysticism, put it even more succinctly: “If a man wishes to be sure of the road he travels on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.”

This redirectioning of the spiritual path has fruitful offshoots. We no longer have to ask why God orders the world in such an unsatisfactory way, allowing cancer cells and war to proliferate. Nor do we have to bombard him with prayer in order to achieve our desired ends. Such dialogue is only sustainable if you posit a personal being.”