memex

M3E1M3E1X8

noun

A proposed computer system, implemented with electromechanical controls and microfilm equipment, that would permit a researcher to follow and annotate topics of interest, analogous to later hypertext technologies.

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Meanings

nounmemex (plural memexes)

plural memexes

  1. A proposed computer system, implemented with electromechanical controls and microfilm equipment, that would permit a researcher to follow and annotate topics of interest, analogous to later hypertext technologies.
    1 more example

    Surely when Vannevar Bush imagined his hyperlinked memex or Jorge Luis Borges his Library of Babel or Tim Berners-Lee his World Wide Web, what excited them wasn’t the possibility of reading the boldfaced words “nympho starlets” in a printed novel, racing to the nearest computer to type a U.R.L. into a browser and watching a YouTube clip of James Blunt singing “You’re Beautiful” over scenes of Sharon Tate in “The Fearless Vampire Killers.”

    2007 February 11, Matt Weiland, “Web of Spies”, in New York Times

Origin

Blend of memory + index, coined by Vannevar Bush in his article As We May Think (1945) in The Atlantic Monthly.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

memex. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/memex

MLA

“memex.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/memex. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “memex,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/memex.

Source: memex on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.