meet

English Online Dictionary. What means meet‎? What does meet mean?

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: mēt, IPA^(key): /miːt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /mit/
• Rhymes: -iːt
• Homophones: meat, mete

Etymology 1

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”).

Verb

meet (third-person singular simple present meets, present participle meeting, simple past and past participle met)

1. To make contact (with someone) while in proximity.
   2. To come face to face with by accident; to encounter.
   3. To come face to face with someone by arrangement.
   4. To get acquainted with someone.
2. (Of groups) To come together.
   1. To gather for a formal or social discussion; to hold a meeting.
   2. To come together in conflict.
   3. (sports) To play a match.

3. To make physical or perceptual contact.
   1. To converge and finally touch or intersect.
   2. To touch or hit something while moving.

   3. To adjoin, be physically touching.

   4. (transitive) To respond to (an argument etc.) with something equally convincing; to refute.

      He met every objection to the trip with another reason I should go.

4. To satisfy; to comply with.
5. (intransitive) To balance or come out correct.
   • 1967, Northern Ireland. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) House of Commons Official Report

     In this instance he has chosen an accountant. I suppose that it will be possible for an accountant to make the figures meet.

6. To perceive; to come to a knowledge of; to have personal acquaintance with; to experience; to suffer.
7. To be mixed with, to be combined with aspects of.

Usage notes

In the sense "come face to face with someone by arrangement", meet is sometimes used with the preposition with. Nonetheless, some state that as a transitive verb in the context "to come together by chance or arrangement", meet (as in meet (someone)) does not require a preposition between verb and object; the phrase meet with (someone) is deemed incorrect. See also meet with.

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

meet (plural meets)

1. (sports) A sports competition, especially for track and field or swimming.
2. (hunting) A gathering of riders, horses and hounds for foxhunting; a field meet for hunting.
3. (rail transport) A meeting of two trains in opposite directions on a single track, when one is put into a siding to let the other cross.

   Antonym: pass

4. (informal) A meeting.
5. (algebra) The greatest lower bound, an operation between pairs of elements in a lattice, denoted by the symbol ∧.

   Antonym: join

Derived terms

Etymology 2

From Middle English mete, imete, from Old English ġemǣte (“suitable, having the same measurements”), from the Proto-Germanic *gamētijaz, *mētiz (“reasonable; estimable”) (cognate with Dutch meten (“measure”), German gemäß (“suitable”) etc.), itself from collective prefix *ga- + Proto-Indo-European *med- (“to measure”).

Alternative forms

• mete (obsolete)

Adjective

meet (comparative meeter, superlative meetest)

1. (archaic) Suitable; right; proper.
2. (obsolete) Submissive; passive.

Derived terms

Translations

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “meet”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• “meet”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• Teme, etem, mete, teem, teme

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /meːt/
• Hyphenation: meet
• Rhymes: -eːt

Etymology 1

From Latin mēta.

Noun

meet f (plural meten, diminutive meetje n)

1. the finish line in a competition

Etymology 2

Verb

meet

1. inflection of meten:
   1. first/second/third-person singular present indicative
   2. imperative

Anagrams

• mete

Finnish

Verb

meet

1. (colloquial or dialectal) second-person singular present indicative of mennä

Synonyms

• menet

Latin

Verb

meet

1. third-person singular present active subjunctive of meō

Middle English

Noun

meet

1. Alternative form of mete (“food”)

North Frisian

Alternative forms

• mätje (Mooring)
• möt (Sylt)

Etymology

From Old Frisian mēta, from Proto-West Germanic *mōtijan.

Pronunciation

• (Föhr-Amrum) IPA^(key): [meːt]

Verb

meet

1. (Föhr-Amrum) to meet, encounter

Conjugation