definition of "meta"

[Chuck Bearden]

On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, Diane Madrigal wrote:

> The Federal Geographic Data Committee's pamphlet, "The Value of
> Metadata," provides this definition of (geospatial) metadata:
> 
> "Meta means change and metadata, or "data about data," describes the
> origins of and tracks the changes to geospatial data."

Erik is correct about the etymology of "meta" and the misunderstanding
of the title of Aristotle's work.  However, the etymology
of a word does not determine its meaning at a given time--its usage
does.  Consider the word "knave", cognate with the German "Knabe".  At
one time, both meant "boy" or "young man", but now the English word
has a definite pejorative reference to the character of the person so
called, while the German still means "boy" or "young man".  Etymology
has not determined the present meaning of that word, else both would
still mean the same.

So I think it is with "meta".  Among the senses given by
Merriam-Webster's WWWDictionary for the prefix (which was in the Greek 
a instead a preposition, but which has changed its syntactic function 
as well as meaning in English), we have:

3 [metaphysics] : more comprehensive : transcending <metapsychology> 
-- used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but 
related discipline designed to deal critically with the original 
one <metamathematics>

Meta- as a prefix is now used to designate a level of transcendence
above the non-meta thing to which it refers, hence the aboutness in
"data about data".  Metadata could properly be thought of as data
standing above and organizing other data.  

Yours pedantically,

Chuck Bearden
Network Services Librarian
Houston Public Library
Houston, TX  77002
713/247-2264 (voice)
713/247-1182 (fax)
cbearden at hpl.lib.tx.us
Not speaking for HPL