copycat /ˈkɒpɪkat/

My first post is about 'copycat', because it is somehow related to the blog title (both meme and copycat are sorts of imitation). It is a word I hear from time to time and, while the overall meaning may be easy to get, I was not sure to understand the differences with similar words.

Photo from Techcrunch

Here is an example:

Photographer LaChapelle can sue Rihanna over 'copycat' video

And another one:

Steve Jobs, former chief executive of Apple, has slammed Samsung as a copycat business

Ok, so copycat seems to be not just a copy, but a hardly legitimate one. And, since I read a lot about technology, and patent wars are all over the news, that can explain why I have found this word a lot lately :-)

But there is also a slightly different meaning, as I heard in the Freakonomics Radio podcast:

And some say they’ve proven that a widely publicized suicide — when described in a certain way — can lead to copycat suicides. A suicide contagion.

So copycat can also be used for behaviour imitation though, funnily enough, especially for suicide and crime.

Stay alert...