Meet

How to spell meet

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce meet

What does meet mean?

1. verbTo come into the presence or company of someone, or to come together at a place or time.
2. nounAn organised gathering for a sporting competition, especially in athletics or swimming.

Meet in a sentence

• verb

  They agreed to meet at the station before the train left.

• noun

  The swimming meet drew competitors from across the county.

• verb

  I hope to meet the new manager at the conference next week.

• noun

  She set a personal best at the regional track meet.

Where does meet come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English verb mētan, meaning 'to come upon, find, or encounter', which itself grew from the noun gemōt, an assembly or meeting of people. That same gemōt root survives today in the word 'moot', as in a 'moot point', which was originally a matter debated at an assembly. The Germanic family shares the form, with cognates in Old Norse and Dutch carrying the same sense of coming together. The spelling settled with the double 'ee' to mark the long vowel, which is precisely what makes it sound identical to 'meat' (the flesh) and 'mete' (to measure out a portion), its two stubborn homophones. There is also an old adjective 'meet', meaning fitting or proper, from Old English gemǣte 'commensurate', now largely archaic but still heard in fixed phrases.

How the word is built

• meet (from Old English mētan: to come upon, encounter), a single irreducible root with no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like meet

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• meat: The flesh of an animal used as food.