Meat or meet?
meat is a noun meaning “The flesh (muscle tissue) of a killed animal used as food”; meet is a verb meaning “To come face to face with by accident; to encounter”. Use meat as a noun and meet as a verb (meet is also a noun: “A sports competition, especially for track and field or…”). They sound the same (/miːt/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) meet is about 4.4 times as common as meat.
What is the difference between meat and meet?
| meat | meet | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | verb, noun, adjective |
| Meaning | The flesh (muscle tissue) of a killed animal used as food A food designed to replicate its taste and texture (such as plant-based meat) | To come face to face with by accident; to encounter To come face to face with someone by arrangement A sports competition, especially for track and field or swimming |
| Example | A large portion of domestic meat production comes from animals raised on factory farms | Fancy meeting you here! Guess who I met at the supermarket today? |
| Forms | meats | meets, meeting, met |
| Pronunciation | /miːt/ /mit/ [mit̚] | /miːt/ /mit/ |
| In writing | 43 times per million words | 186 times per million words |
Sources: meat and meet in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of meat and meet
meat
- 1
The flesh (muscle tissue) of a killed animal used as food
A large portion of domestic meat production comes from animals raised on factory farms
- 2
A food designed to replicate its taste and texture (such as plant-based meat)
- 3
A type of meat, by anatomic position and provenance
The butchery's profit rate on various meats varies greatly
- 4
Any relatively thick, solid part of a fruit, nut etc
The apple looked fine on the outside, but the meat was not very firm
meet
- 1
To come face to face with by accident; to encounter
Fancy meeting you here! Guess who I met at the supermarket today?
- 2
A sports competition, especially for track and field or swimming
track meet
- 3
To come face to face with someone by arrangement
Let's meet at the station at 9 o'clock
- 4
A gathering of riders, horses and hounds for foxhunting; a field meet for hunting
- 5
To get acquainted with someone
I'm pleased to meet you! I'd like you to meet a colleague of mine
- 6
A meeting of two trains in opposite directions on a single track, when one is put into a siding to let the other cross
- 7
To gather for a formal or social discussion; to hold a meeting
I met with them several times. The government ministers met today to start the negotiations
- 8
informalA meeting
OK, let's arrange a meet with Tyler and ask him
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, meat or meet?
meat appears 43 times per million words; meet 186 times per million words.
meat 43 times per million wordsmeet 186 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search meat vs meet?
“meat vs meet” is searched about 590 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“meet vs meat”, “meat or meet”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.