What Does Prefix 'Meta' Mean?

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.