To meet a deadline is to finish by the time you were given. The file goes at ten to five, and five o'clock was the point.
Meet is the satisfying verb, the same one in meet a target and meet the criteria: you come up to the line rather than crossing it. Miss is its opposite, and a deadline is tight when there is not enough room in it and looming when it is nearly here. Extend one and you have moved the line; work to one and you have accepted it.
1phrasemeet a deadlineTo finish by the time set.
“He works late to meet a deadline he agreed to in March.”
meet a deadline is an act of finishing on schedule.
Practised in Common Word Pairs