Meemaw

This character will finally appear on the show in February 2016 and is played by Academy Award nominated actress June Squibb.


"Meemaw" is Sheldon's name for his maternal grandmother, whose real name is unknown. She may be Mary Cooper's mother and Sheldon's favorite of all his living family members, as he shows her no resentment at all, unlike his resentment toward his other family members. She was widowed in 1985, when her husband, Sheldon's grandfather, "Pop-pop", passed away. She has only been mentioned and has not appeared in the series.

Overview
Meemaw is mentioned often throughout the series but hasn't yet made an appearance to date.

Meemaw is first mentioned in "The Terminator Decoupling", when Sheldon asks Penny by the phone to email him a paper in a flash-drive he forgot to take with him during a trip. Penny locates a wrong box which holds the letters from Sheldon's grandmother. Penny calls Sheldon "Moonpie", as she has read from a letter. Sheldon is agitated and tells Penny, "No one calls [him] Moonpie, but Meemaw." He also explains that Meemaw calls him Moonpie because "[he's] nummy nummy and she could just eat [him] up".

His Meemaw is effectively Sheldon's weakness in several episodes. He generally refuses to consider any ill will or imperfection she has, including the thought that Meemaw needed to have sex in order to conceive his mother. Wil Wheaton also uses Sheldon's adoration for Meemaw against him, stating that his own grandmother passed away, which caused him to miss a convention of which Sheldon had attended to meet Wil Wheaton in his childhood. This story forces Sheldon to back down in a Mystic Warlords of Ka'a card tournament, relinquishing the championship title to Wheaton in the episode "The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary". This story was only a ruse in order for Wheaton to win against Sheldon, of whom he couldn't beat through gameplay.

In "The Precious Fragmentation", Raj, Howard and Sheldon each want The Lord of the Rings movie prop ring and the last one holding it gets it. Howard's mother wants to know where he is and Raj starts making trouble for him messing up Howard’s lies. ("I am so glad we came to this Gentile strip club! Howard, here's more bacon to tuck into the shiksa's g-string!!") Then they decide to talk about Sheldon’s mother and grandmother. His Meemaw had to have sex to have his mother and she had sex because she LIKED it. This is after Sheldon called "No Meemaw's", meaning she wasn't to be included.

By Sheldon's descriptions, Meemaw has made cookies for him and had him polish her silver.

In "The Santa Simulation", Sheldon says that Meemaw and Pop-pop were singing Christmas carols as he tried to build a high-energy particle accelerator out of Lego.

In "The Clean Room Infiltration", Amy had contacted her so she could make Sheldon his favorite cookies for Christmas from his Meemaw's recipe; therefore, his grandmother is still alive as of December 2014. Sheldon thinks that Amy's cookies taste like his Meemaw's hugs.

Family

 * Husband: Pop-pop
 * Daughter: Mary Cooper
 * Sons: Carl and Edward
 * Son-in-law: George Cooper Sr.
 * Grandsons: George Cooper Jr. and Sheldon Cooper
 * Granddaughter: Missy Cooper
 * Great-grandson: Unnamed thru Missy
 * Grandson-in-law: Missy's husband

Trivia

 * Sheldon mentioned in "The Hawking Excitation" that his grandmother grew up in.
 * Once killed a with a gravy boat.
 * "Meemaw", like "mamaw", "mimah" and various other expressions for grandmother or mother, ultimately derives from Acadian  , in which the French maman ('mother') is pronounced more or less as "m'maw".
 * A plausible alternative is based on the Dutch/Afrikaans phrase mijn ouma (my grandmother, my granny) contracting to mi'ouma. (although the Accadian French is more geographically plausible)

Mentioned Episodes

 * S02E17: The Terminator Decoupling
 * S02E23: The Monopolar Expedition
 * S03E05: The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary
 * S03E17: The Precious Fragmentation
 * S03E19: The Wheaton Recurrence
 * S03E20: The Spaghetti Catalyst
 * S04E05: The Desperation Emanation
 * S04E21: The Agreement Dissection
 * S05E21: The Hawking Excitation
 * S06E11: The Santa Simulation
 * S08E11: The Clean Room Infiltration