Adjective: meet
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | meeter |
| Superlative | meetest |
Perifrastic
Sample Sentences
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It ſeemes not meete, nor wholeſome to my place, / To be producted, (as, if I ſtay, I ſhall,) / Againſt the Moore. […] [c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i], page 311:]
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And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him an helpe meet for him. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 2:18:]
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And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God: lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us? [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 8:26:]
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[…] it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set down who the Pequod's harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them belonged. [1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XXVII, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 131:]
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The mountain birds are sweeter,
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But the valley birds are fatter,
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And so we deemed it meeter
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To carry off the latter. [1958, T[erence] H[anbury] White, chapter VIII, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone):]
Adjectives inflected like meet
sallow,
smooth,
slight,
sleigh,
sordid,
somber,
shweet,
shrill,
shrewd,
yellow,
yaller,
hard knock,
DRY,
Greek,
cut short,
unquiet,
unclean,
indiscreet,
chipper,
straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle English mete, imete, from Old English ġemǣte (“suitable, having the same measurements”), from the Proto-Germanic *gamētijaz, *mētiz (“reasonable; estimable”) (cognate with Dutch meten (“measure”), German gemäß (“suitable”) etc.), itself from collective prefix *ga- + Proto-Indo-European *med- (“to measure”). See: German Adjectives '
gemäß'.