Learn how to use the verb "Meet"
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| Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha. Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. In this lesson, we're going to talk about the verb, "meet." |
| Let's begin. The basic definition of the verb, "meet" is to see and speak to someone for the first time. Some examples, "We haven't met." "I want to meet a famous person someday." |
| Now, let's look at the conjugations of the verb. Present, meet, meets. Past, met. Past participle, met. Progressive, meeting. |
| Now, let's look at some additional meanings for the verb. The first additional meaning for today is to fulfill or achieve something. Examples, "This apartment meets all my requirements." "We met our company's sales goal for last month." In both of these examples, we see the verb, "meet" being used to mean fulfilling or achieving something. This apartment meets all of my requirements. This apartment fulfills all of my requirements. Everything I need is in this apartment. Everything I require is in this apartment. This apartment meets my requirements. In the second example sentence, "We met our sales goal for the month," means we achieved our sales goal for the month. We did the things we needed to do. We achieved our goal. We met our goal, in past tense. |
| Let's go to the second meaning of this verb. The second meaning is to wait for someone or something. Example sentences of this, "Can you meet my mom at the station?" "I'll meet you in front of the restaurant." In both of these sentences, the idea is you're going to meet someone. Maybe, you know the meaning of the verb as in regularly meeting someone like "I meet my mom for coffee once a week," or "I meet my friends for lunch once a week." That's fine. This is slightly different because the feeling here is, you're going to a location to wait for someone. To wait to pick them up. To wait, to get together with them and go somewhere with them. You're going there to wait, meet, and then go. We just use the verb, "meet" in this case. "Can you meet my mom at the station" means can you go to the station, wait there for my mom to arrive, and then go to another place. Maybe, come home with my mom. In the second example sentence, "I'll meet you in front of the restaurant." It sounds like the speaker is going to go to the front of the restaurant, wait there for the listener, and then proceed to their meal, for example. We can use meet to mean waiting for someone or something at a specific place before they go the next thing. |
| The third meaning for this for verb is to join things together. Two things or two or more things come together. Examples of this, "the river meets the ocean here." "The paths met in the forest." The river meets the ocean here. The space where the two things come together, that's the place where they meet. Thing A and thing B come together and meet right here. They're joining together there. The same thing with the second sentence. The two paths met in the forest. Maybe two different paths, there's one point where they come together, they join together. We can say, "The two paths met in the forest." Things coming together like this, we can use the verb, "meet" to describe that relationship. |
| Let's talk about some variations of this verb. The first variation is "to meet halfway." "To meet halfway" means to make a compromise or just to compromise. Let's look at some examples of this. "Can we meet halfway regarding this issue?" "I want to go hiking and you want to have a picnic. Let's meet halfway and have lunch in the park." These are expressions we can use to refer to a compromise. In my first example sentence, I used a question. "Can we meet halfway regarding this issue" means can we make a compromise regarding this issue? "Meet halfway" means make a compromise. It's just a shorter way, a little bit more friendly. "To meet halfway" sounds like maybe the speaker wants to compromise a little bit. The speaker is willing to let go a little bit of their opinion or their side. In the second example sentence, I gave a pretty clear situation. One person wanted to go hiking, another person wanted to have a picnic. So, the compromise was having lunch in the park. That's meeting halfway. Let's meet halfway. Let's compromise. Let's make a compromise and have lunch in the park. We can use meet halfway to refer to compromising between a couple of different ideas. Why do we say "meet halfway?" If there are two opinions and they're completely different from each other, imagine on a line Opinion A and Opinion B, and right here, halfway, is the compromise point. They're saying, "let's meet halfway." Let's meet at this compromise point and continue further. "Meet halfway" means compromise. |
| Let's go to the next variation. The next variation is "to meet one's maker" or "to meet your maker." "To meet someone's maker" means to die. It's an expression that means to die. We tend to use it a little bit... This is a strange thing to say but we use it in a funny way. We don't really use this expression to talk seriously about death. Example sentences of this. "I sent that spider to meet his maker." "I'm afraid of the day I have to meet my maker." In the first example I said, "I sent that spider to meet his maker." This is an interesting way of saying "I kill the spider." I sent that spider to meet his maker. |
| First, let's talk about "maker" here. Why do we say, "meet his maker" or "meet your maker?" This refers to a belief in God or a belief in a higher power. The "maker" being a person or... should I say a person... the "maker" would be the being that created you, that created this person, that created this thing. "To meet one's maker" is to meet the person, or to meet the thing, or to meet the entity, whatever your belief is that created you or that created the thing that you're talking about. When I say, "I sent that spider to meet his maker," I'm saying "I sent." "I sent" meaning I caused the spider to go. I sent the spider. I didn't actually mail a spider somewhere but I caused the spider to go to meet his maker. In other words, I caused the spider to die. I killed a spider. That's what happened there. In the second sentence, "I'm afraid to meet my maker," means I'm afraid to die. It has a casual feel to it. "Meet my maker" or "meet one's maker" has a not so serious feeling about death, but it means to die. |
| Those are a few different, perhaps, ways to use the verb, "meet." I hope that that was helpful for you and you picked up some new vocabulary words you can use. Of course, if you know some other meanings of the verb meet, if you want to try to make an example sentence, or if you have a question, please feel free to do so in the comment section. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs. We'll see you again soon. Bye. |
| Meet, not the kind that you eat. The first, but first words, not top words. Please feel free to do so or contact us in the comments, I guess. That's weird. I don't know where that came from. I'm going to do that again. |
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