meetvsmetWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“meet” and “met” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#544
“meet” frequency rank
#853
“met” frequency rank
1397
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meet met
Definition To make contact (with someone) while in proximity. simple past and past participle of meet

Where the eye mixes meet and met

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
meet
3 ch
met

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. meet (/miːt/) and met (/mɛt/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1397, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meet is recorded at frequency rank #544, classified as averb, pronounced /miːt/. met is at rank #853, tagged as averb, pronounced /mɛt/.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 1397, this pair ranks #527,521 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of meet vs met

Shared letters: emt. Private to "meet": -. Private to "met": -.

"meet" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "met" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meetemet · meett · mete · mmeet

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "meet" and "met" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/miːt/ versus /mɛt/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "meet" or "met"?
"meet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #544 in our English list, against #853 for "met". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list