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greet

verbadjectiveverbnouncommon in dialogue

  • //ɡɹiːt//

To welcome in a friendly manner, either in person or through another means such as writing.

verb

  1. 1

    To welcome in a friendly manner, either in person or through another means such as writing.

    My lord, the mayor of London comes to greet you.

    Warwick observed, as they passed through the respectable quarter, that few people who met the girl greeted her, and that some others whom she passed at gates or doorways gave her no sign of recognition; from which he inferred that she was possibly a visitor in the town and not well acquainted.

  2. 2

    To arrive at or reach, or meet.

    In vain the Spring my Senſes greets / In all her Colours, all her Svveets; / To me the Roſe / No longer glovvs, / Every Plant / Has loſt its Scent: […]

    Way deep in left field, where the carpet of green sloped upward to a terrace and greeted the thick line of trees, he reached out his glove.

  3. 3

    To accost; to address.

    Fair on his feet the polish'd sandals shine, And thus he greets the master of the swine:

    I can be active as long as I stay in the closet. If I go forth as who I am, I will be greeted with closed doors.

  4. 4

    archaicTo meet and give salutations.

    There greet in silence, as the dead are wont, And sleep in peace.

  5. 5

    figurativeTo be perceived by (someone).

    A brilliant dawn greeted her eyes as she looked out of the window.

    Muggy heat—temperature in the 90s and high humidity—greeted early arrivals for the 72-hole, three-day test, rated the hardest and most important in the sport.

    The first thing that greets you on entering the church is a notice asking you not to vex the goat, since it renders valuable service in keeping the churchyard tidy.

    From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much. Those entering it are greeted by wire fences, walls dating back to colonial times and security posts. For mariners leaving the port after lonely nights on the high seas, the delights of the B52 Night Club and Stallion Pub lie a stumble away.

Etymology

From Middle English greten, from Old English grētan, from Proto-West Germanic *grōtijan, from Proto-Germanic *grōtijaną. Cognate with Dutch groeten, German grüßen, grüssen.

adjective

  1. 1

    Great.

Etymology

From Middle English greet, grete (“great”).

verb

  1. 1

    To weep; to cry.

    And damn't! if he didn't take down her bit things and scone her so sore she grat like a bairn [...].

    My maw went potty and started greeting.

Etymology

From a blend of two Old English verbs, grētan, grǣtan (itself from Proto-West Germanic *grātan); and of Old English grēotan (itself from *greutan), both meaning "to weep, lament". Possibly reinforced in Northern England and Scotland by Old Norse gráta, whence also Danish græde, Norwegian gråte, Swedish gråta, all meaning "to cry, to weep".

noun

  1. 1

    obsoleteMourning, weeping, lamentation.

Forms

comparative
more greet
superlative
most greet
past tense
greeted, grat, grutten
past participle
greeted, grat, grutten
present participle
greeting
third person singular
greets
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).