The word "meet"

Year Of English

"Meet" is one of the most basic words in the English language, but it's actually quite complex.
First of all, it can mean different things depending on the situation:

1. To see and speak with someone for the first time.
   "It was really nice to meet you."
   “All I want is to meet a guy with a stable job and a good sense of humor.”
2. To come together in the same place with someone.
   "Where should we meet?"

Within the second category, there's an extra complication. The simple verb "meet" by itself is formal, so we use it to talk about a formal meeting for business or important conversations, or for speaking generally about the action of meeting people:

2. A) To come together with someone for an important conversation.
   "I'd like to meet to discuss my son's performance in your class and what I can do to help him do better."

​But this word doesn't really work for talking about meeting people for social reasons. We use the phrase "meet up" to talk about that:

2. B) To come together with someone for social activities or informally.
   "You want to meet up after class and go over it?"

There are a few other interesting aspects to the word "meet":

• It's used in idioms like "meet (someone's) standards", "meet a goal", and "meet a price" to mean reaching a certain level.
• When you talk about "meetings", it usually means business or work meetings.
• You can also use the word "meet" as a noun (although it's not very common):
  "They set up a meet in an abandoned warehouse by the docks."

Now you know some facts about "meet". But in order to really learn how to use the word properly, you should practice repeating and memorizing sentences that use the word "meet" correctly. This page has a list of 15 example sentences to get you started:
http://www.phrasemix.com/categories/word-meet