meet

meet. There are two uses that deserve attention.

1. It is a transitive verb and so it is possible to meet someone, or simply meet. Idiomatically one meets with a circumstance rather than a person, typically something unpleasant or unwelcome; or one meets with a response or reaction, again often unfavourable (This may not meet with the approval of the parents / Her appointment as chief vet met with sniffiness among some farmers). Now meet is increasingly used with the link word with (or up with, based on meet up) when people are involved, typically in contexts involving prolonged discussion or dealings (the people who will be meeting with the Secretary of State / A few weeks later I met up with them again). This is not entirely a new use: it is recorded in the OED from the 17c in the sense of casual or accidental encounter, including this quotation of 1740 from David Hume: ‘Tis…rare to meet with persons, who can pardon another any opposition he makes to their interest’. It is true to say however that meet with has become fashionable again in contexts of intentional or arranged meeting under the influence of AmE, and tends to be used in contexts where plain meet would be more usual.

2. Meet is used informally in a sense dating from the 1980s to refer to a mixture or blend of characteristics or attributes, the image being one of a dramatic or unexpected encounter. The tense is always (indeterminate) present and the verb can be reduplicated:

• A weird crew called Levellers 5, from Lancashire, give us Springtime Bob Dylan meets Half Man Half Biscuit meets Frank Zappa —Guardian, 1990.