Met

How to spell met

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce met

What does met mean?

1. verbThe past tense and past participle of 'meet': came into the presence of, encountered, or satisfied a requirement.

Met in a sentence

• They met for coffee before the morning conference.

• The new factory met every safety requirement on the inspector's list.

Where does met come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'meet', which descends from the Old English 'metan', meaning 'to find, encounter, or come upon'. That verb belonged to a wider Germanic family and is related to the noun 'gemot', an assembly or meeting, the very source of the place name element in 'Witenagemot', the council of wise men in Anglo-Saxon England. The irregular form 'met' arose from an ancient pattern in which the vowel shortened in the past tense rather than taking a regular '-ed' ending, which is why it looks so unlike its present form. Over the centuries the spelling settled into the short, three-letter shape we use today, while the meaning broadened from a physical encounter to include meeting deadlines, demands, and expectations. The trap for writers is purely its brevity: it is easy to write 'meet' out of habit even when the past tense is intended.

How the word is built

• met (irregular past tense and past participle of the verb 'meet')