1. /me't*/ or /may't*/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/ adj.,pref. [from analytic philosophy] One level of description up. A metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe language. This is difficult to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns on deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See hacker humor. From Jargon Dictionary