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I understand what the Meta sites are, their purpose in life, and their importance, however I do not understand fully why they have the name 'Meta'? I mean, why not 'Bobcat'? Could someone please explain?

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    You know that you could dodge most downvotes by refraining from the silly name, right? Just "what is the meaning of the word meta" is enough. Considered editing, but on second thought you might have done it on purpose. – Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask Sep 18 '15 at 20:55
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    Agree with @Sha. If you ignore the funny facial expression I got when I read this question's title, my first reaction was "why not 'meta'? Why 'bobcat'?" – M.A.R. Sep 18 '15 at 20:57
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    It's a lot better to assume the word means something and try to find that out (it's only a quick web search away!) than to assume it means nothing, as apparently here. – Nathan Tuggy Sep 18 '15 at 21:13
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Like I just answered on meta.askubuntu.com

Citing from wikipedia:

Meta (from the Greek preposition and prefix meta- (μετά-) meaning "after", or "beyond") is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.

The English usage for meta is more in the direction of "about", hence meta.askubuntu.com is the site where you talk about the site askubuntu.com

| improve this answer | |
  • Sorry, Thomas W. said that I should ask here instead, or at least he suggested that here might be a better place for the question, and as I had no answer there yet I posted about it here too. – user280862 Sep 18 '15 at 19:43
  • Well he said that it would maybe belong here so you could have asked a site-recommendation question here first to see if the question is in the right place. – Anthony Pham Sep 19 '15 at 1:25
  • @ParanoidPanda atually he suggested meta.SO – Tim Sep 19 '15 at 7:38
  • @Tim: Oh, well easy mistake to make... – user280862 Dec 23 '15 at 19:21

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