παρῳδία

Greek paroidia (παρῳδία) combines para ('beside, alongside') and oide ('song, ode'). A parody was a song sung beside another song — using the same melody and structure but changing the words for comic effect. The form was already well established by the 4th century BCE. Aristotle mentions parody in the Poetics, attributing its invention to Hegemon of Thasos.

Roman literature continued the tradition. Ovid's Metamorphoses was parodied almost immediately. The mock-epic — a genre that applies the grand style of epic poetry to trivial subjects — became a literary staple. Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1712) used Homeric conventions to describe a woman losing a lock of hair. The comedy depends entirely on the reader recognizing the original being mocked.

English borrowed parody from Latin parodia (via French) in the 1590s. The word expanded beyond music and poetry to include any imitation of a work, style, or genre for comic or critical effect. Parody became a legal concept in the 20th century: courts had to decide whether a parody was protected speech or copyright infringement. In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose (1994), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that 2 Live Crew's parody of Roy Orbison's 'Oh, Pretty Woman' was fair use.

The internet made parody instantaneous. Memes are visual parodies — they take a recognizable image or format and alter it for comic effect. The structure is identical to Hegemon of Thasos in the 4th century BCE: same form, different content, laughter. The medium changed. The mechanism did not.