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PlainSpell

meat

/mit/noun

meat is spelled M-E-A-T: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 43 times per million words in written English, the 2,339th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “meat vs meet” about 590 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, meat means “The flesh (muscle tissue) of a killed animal used as food” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of meat is meats.

How many letters and syllables are in meat?

Letters4: M-E-A-T
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing43 times per million words; the 2,339th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Sounds like
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is meat?

Meat appears 43 times per million words in written English, the 2,339th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce meat?

  • /miːt/
  • US /mit/
  • US [mit̚]

Meat has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-meat.ogg, En-uk-meat.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Back_ache-meat.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with meat

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

meat vs meet590 G

Sounds like: meet, mete (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with meat?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as meat from its last stressed vowel (/it/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: team, mate, meta, tame.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of meat

  • meats plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does meat mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 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. 2

    A food designed to replicate its taste and texture (such as plant-based meat).

  3. 3

    A type of meat, by anatomic position and provenance.

    The butchery's profit rate on various meats varies greatly.

  4. 4

    archaicFood, for animals or humans, especially solid food.

    meat and drink

  5. 5

    archaicA type of food, a dish.

  6. 6

    archaicA meal.

  7. 7

    obsoleteMeal; flour.

  8. 8

    Any relatively thick, solid part of a fruit, nut etc.

    The apple looked fine on the outside, but the meat was not very firm.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Meat in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchviande (animal flesh used as food)
GermanFleisch (animal flesh used as food), Fruchtfleisch (solid edible part of a plant)
Portuguesecarne (animal flesh used as food)
Spanishcarne (animal flesh used as food)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does meat come from?

Inherited from Middle English mete (“food”), from Old English mete (“food”), from Proto-West Germanic *mati (“food”), from Proto-Germanic *matiz (“food”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂d- (“to be wet; grease, fat”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after meat