meta-ness

A form of metaness — Self-referentiality and self-awareness, especially of tropes in art and fiction.

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Meanings

nounmeta-ness (uncountable)
  1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of metaness.

    This meta-ness and ironic distance doesn’t always present in an artist’s generic choices.

    2021 September 29, Rachel Aroesti, “Collapsed laughing: how the gap between music and comedy has disappeared”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
    3 more examples

    What he is pointing to is the collective output exemplified by Wikipedia etc, meta-sources of informaiton^([sic]) such as Google, and meta-meta-meta sources such as (in increasing order of meta-ness), Boing Boing, Digg and Popurls.

    2006 May 31, Jack Schofield, “Jaron Lanier on the stupidity of the hive mind”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

    Original songs like Synthesize Me and Slapback Boomerang play beautifully with the meta-ness of writing songs about song-writing, […].

    2014 March 26, Rob Fitzpatrick, “The 101 Strangest Records on Spotify: The Space Lady - The Space Lady's Greatest Hits”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

    It was a fun time for meta-ness and meanness, but even though we didn’t know it at the time, its appeal had an expiry date.

    2025 August 16, Euny Hong, “‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Is My Kind of Globalism”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
Cite this entry
APA

meta-ness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/meta-ness

MLA

“meta-ness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/meta-ness. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “meta-ness,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/meta-ness.

Source: meta-ness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.