The word meister originally means "master" in German (as in master craftsman). It has been borrowed into English slang, where it is used in compound words. Until recently, those neologisms mostly had a sarcastic intent (for example, "stubblemeister" for someone with a short neat beard; heard on BBC TV).

Meister has also been used as a police rank of Germany with the first usage dating to the 19th century. Many modern day German police forces use variations of the title Meister. During the Second World War, Meister was the highest enlisted rank of the Ordnungspolizei.

However, meister owes a switch to a more positive connotation and recent popularity boost to a single prominent use in a popular movie, namely American Pie (see also Schadenfreude): Stifler, one of the protagonists in American Pie, refers to himself as the "Stif-meister" at several occasions. This self-reference using the third person (instead of the normal, first person pronoun "I" ) implies high self-confidence and specifically superior sexual power, which sounds like mere bragging in the beginning (=conventional, sarcastic use). However, at the end of the movie, Stifler actually experiences a very exotic kind of sexual relation for which he is admired by his friends. With this, the self-reference as "Stif-meister" becomes suddenly not only justified, but the expression itself starts to sound cool and even seems to have a magical touch. In the years following the release of the movie, young Americans were observed combining meister with desirable things, like money-meister, pick-up-meister.