meet

UK/miːt/US/mit/

verbA16 meanings One of the most common words in English · #129 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: met, meets

To meet someone is to come to the same place at the same time. Six o'clock outside the cinema, two friends spotting each other across the road and waving.

Meet also covers the first time: 'we meet a lot of new people in this job', 'nice to meet you'. That one is a one-off — after the first time you see each other, you do not meet again. A committee meets, roads meet, two rivers meet at the bridge. It reaches into standards as well: you meet a deadline, meet a target, meet the requirements. The past tense is met, never meeted. And notice 'meet with' — you can meet with a colleague, but 'meet with resistance' or 'meet with an accident' means running into something you did not want at all.

Definitions of meet

1verbmeetTo come to the same place as someone, by arrangement or by chance.A1~6%
“Let's meet outside the station at seven.”
2verbseeTo see and speak to someone for the first time.A1~6%
“It is always strange to meet someone you have only ever emailed.”
3verbtogetherTo come together as a group for a purpose.A2~2%
“The board meets on the first Monday of every month.”
4verbtouchTo touch or join, as roads, lines or rivers do.B1~6%
“The two paths meet just beyond the bridge.”
5verbsatisfyTo do or provide what is needed or demanded.B2~49%
“The building does not meet current fire regulations.”
synonyms: satisfy, fulfil
6nounorganisedAn organised sporting event, especially in athletics or swimming.B2~31%
“She broke her own record at the county swimming meet.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

make ends meet — to earn just enough money to pay for what you need
meet someone halfway — to reach an agreement by both sides giving something up
more than meets the eye — more to a situation than is obvious at first

Where it comes from

Meet comes down the Germanic line without a detour: Old English mētan, 'to meet, find, encounter', from Proto-Germanic *mōtijaną and a Proto-Indo-European root *meh₂d-, 'to come, meet'. Dutch ontmoeten, Swedish möta and Icelandic mæta are the same word in other mouths. English moot belongs to the family too.

Proto-Indo-European
*meh₂d- (meet)
Proto-Indo-European
*meh₂d- — to come, meet
Proto-Germanic
*mōtijaną — to meet
Proto-West Germanic
*mōtijan — to meet
Old English
mētan — to meet, find, encounter
Middle English
meten
English, today
meet

From Middle English meten, from Old English mētan (“to meet, find, encounter”), from Proto-West Germanic mōtijan (“to meet”), from Proto-Germanic mōtijaną (“to meet”), from Proto-Indo-European meh₂d- (“to come, meet”). 2 Cognate with Scots met, mete, meit (“to meet”), frr meet, mätje, möt (“to meet”), West Frisian mette, moetsje (“to meet”), Dutch ontmoeten (“to meet”), Low German möten (“to meet”), Danish møde (“to meet”), ovd my̨öt (“to meet”), Faroese møta (“to meet”), Icelandic mæta (“to meet”), Norwegian Bokmål møte (“to meet”), Norwegian Nynorsk møta, møte (“to meet”), Swedish möta (“to meet”). Related to moot.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs

Practise this word

meet in the wild

In the film, Lewis, an orphaned 12-year-old inventor, meets Wilbur Robinson, a young time-traveler who takes him to the future, before an incident wrecks Wilbur's time machine.
Meet the Robinsons
As part of the Charter, hosting of the meet is to rotate among these four nations, with the meet being held in Japan every other championship.
Pan Pacific Swimming Championships
Initially, the meet was open to all countries that border the Pacific Ocean, giving the meet its name.
Pan Pacific Swimming Championships
Since 2018, this served as a selection meet for Great Stirling Cross Country meet in Scotland.
USATF National Club Cross Country Championships
The angel instructs Balaam to attend the meeting with the princes of Moab but to "say only what I tell you".
Balak

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the mētan family

meet

meet — used about once every 9 pages · #129 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of meet

1verbmeetTo come to the same place as someone, by arrangement or by chance.A1~6%

“Let's meet outside the station at seven.”

2verbseeTo see and speak to someone for the first time.A1~6%

“It is always strange to meet someone you have only ever emailed.”

3verbtogetherTo come together as a group for a purpose.A2~2%

“The board meets on the first Monday of every month.”

4verbtouchTo touch or join, as roads, lines or rivers do.B1~6%

“The two paths meet just beyond the bridge.”

5verbsatisfyTo do or provide what is needed or demanded.B2~49%

“The building does not meet current fire regulations.”

synonyms: satisfy, fulfil

6nounorganisedAn organised sporting event, especially in athletics or swimming.B2~31%

“She broke her own record at the county swimming meet.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.