Word.ws English Dictionary

well met

well met interjection: a greeting.

Interjection

  1. (archaic) A greeting.
    • Bardolph: Well met, Corporal Nim.c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, act II, scene I
    • " Well met ! Well met ! Thou'lt soon be set
      Before the ale-cup flowing."1833, Unknown translator, “The Death Song of Regner Lodbrog”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, volume 33, page 915

Adjective

well met (not comparable)

  1. (archaic) Welcome, greeted.
    • Clown: Here comes Sir Oliver: Sir Oliver Mar-text, you are well met.c. 1599, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act I, scene IX
    • Mother of God! but we are well met here, in this wilderness, among the savages.1902, Emerson Hough, The Mississippi Bubble, →ISBN, pages 280–281
  2. Greeted by a person of high respect or social status.
    • Lady Merlumina?! You were well met. She is an ancestor of mine.
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see well, met.

Origin of well met

A shortening of It is well that we have met.

Questions about well met

What does well met mean?
Well met means a greeting.
What part of speech is well met?
Well met can be an interjection or an adjective.

Words near well met in the dictionary

  1. well liquor
  2. well liquors
  3. well logging
  4. well loved
  5. well mannered
  6. well met
  7. well nigh
  8. well nut
  9. well nuts
  10. well off
  11. well played

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: well met (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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