remix

/REE-miks/

noun · verb

Meaning

A remix is a new version of existing media made by changing its audio, visuals, text, timing, context, or arrangement. Online, the source may be a song, meme, image, sound, or video, and the new version usually keeps enough of the original to be recognizable. As a verb, to remix means to make or use that altered version.[1][2]

1. A re-edited or recontextualized meme, sound, image, or video that adds a different joke, reaction, caption, or presentation.
2. A new version of a song or recording made by rearranging, extending, combining, or adding to its original parts.
3. To alter existing media into a new creative version, often by sampling, cutting, captioning, adding effects, or supplying new footage.
4. A further version made from an earlier remix, especially when creators repeatedly build on the same sound, clip, or format.

Examples

“This remix gives the cat final-boss music.”

“Someone made a remix with a fake weather report.”

“The basketball remix is funnier than the original.”

“I remixed that meme for the group chat.”

“That remix uses the same sound but flips the whole joke.”

Origin and spread

Remix is formed from re- and mix, but its modern media sense developed through recorded-music practices rather than from internet slang. Scholarship traces related production practices through Jamaican dub and versioning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, followed by disco and hip-hop remix culture. The term and practice later expanded beyond professional music: by the late 1990s, people were using remix as a broad label for public, digital reuse, including altered photographs and videos. Meme and short-video use is a natural continuation of that broader sense. Older general uses of the verb meaning “mix again” are separate from the modern recording and internet senses.

How to use it

Remix is informal but widely understood in music, fandom, gaming, and social media. In meme talk, it normally implies deliberate borrowing plus a meaningful change; a straight repost is not usually called a remix. Platform tools may label sampling, cutting, green-screening, collabing, or using a template as remixing. When copyrighted material is used outside a platform’s licensed tools, permission, fair use, and takedown issues may apply.

Sources

1. YouTube Help — Create YouTube Shorts with remixed contentSupports: meaning.
2. U.S. Copyright Office — More Information on Fair UseSupports: meaning.