What Does 'Meta' Mean?

Meta is an HTML tag placed in the head section of a web page. It provides Web site keywords for search engines. This tag also provides information that describes the document in various ways. It also offers additional information that is not displayed on the page itself. This tag encloses valuable information for search engines to use in adding your web pages to their search indexes. A number of search engines use the information within tags as part of their algorithms.

Meta is also a common English prefix. It originates from the Greek word that means 'after' or 'beyond'. Metaphysics, Meta language, Meta directory etc are some of the words using Meta as a prefix. It is derived from an Ancient Greek preposition and is seen in Aristotle's works where he uses the word metaphysics which meant after physics. Some other popular words beginning with Meta are Meta character, Meta philosophy, Meta logic, Meta fiction etc.

The term 'meta' when used as prefix, conveys the idea of something connected with change of position or state of something. And sometimes the word also conveys the concept of higher or beyond. The word is one of the most popular as prefix and can be taken at par with some widely used prefixes. You can find its use in numerous words like metabolism and metamorphosis.

The prefix can be understood well when it is used in the word metamorphosis which is a word that is used to describe the phenomenon of change that happened in somebody over a period of time and at the passage of time the object is a completely different one. Meta describes the phenomenon of change and 'morph' is the word that describes about to taking shape. So metamorphosis is a method in which something takes a completely different shape.

One definition of this Greek word is transcending, or going above and beyond. In the computer field, it defines things that embrace more than the usual. For example, a metafile contains all types of data. Meta-data describes other data. See metafile, metadata and meta tag.