Definition
"Met" is not a substantive legal term. It functions in legal writing primarily as the past tense of "meet" — as in a condition, standard, or burden that has been satisfied or fulfilled. In this sense, it appears constantly in legal analysis: a threshold is met, a burden of proof is met, elements are met, a deadline is met. The word carries no independent legal definition; its legal significance is entirely dependent on what requirement or standard it modifies.
In classical Latin legal usage, "met" survived as a pronominal emphatic suffix (egomet, tutemet, nosmet) attached to personal pronouns to convey the sense of the English "self" or "very" — as in "I myself" or "you yourself." This usage occasionally surfaces in Latin maxims and early common law texts but does not constitute a legal term of art.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Met" refers colloquially to several London institutions — the Metropolitan Police Service, the Metropolitan Railway, and the Metropolitan line of the London Underground — as well as to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It is also the standard past tense and past participle of "meet."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Simply listed as the past tense of "meet," with no independent definition.
In legal contexts, "met" carries none of these institutional or colloquial associations. Its legal weight comes entirely from the verb "meet" in its sense of satisfying a requirement — a usage that is precise and consequential even though the word itself is unremarkable.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will rarely need to look up "met" as a dictionary term, but they will need to read it carefully in context. The word is one of the most consequential in legal analysis precisely because it signals whether a threshold, test, or condition has been crossed. Courts will often turn on exactly this word: whether elements were met, whether the standard was met, whether notice was met. Its apparent simplicity can obscure real analytical work.
In historical sources, the Latin emphatic suffix met occasionally appears in transcribed maxims or early equity texts. A researcher encountering "egomet" or "nosmet" in a primary source should recognize this as a classical Latin intensifier, not a separate word or legal term. Burrill and similar 19th-century dictionaries sometimes reproduce Latin phrases without glossing these suffixes explicitly, which can briefly confuse a reader unfamiliar with Latin pronoun forms.
No meaningful jurisdictional variation attaches to the word itself; variation lies in the standards and elements the word modifies in any given doctrinal context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary does not define "met" as an independent term. The source material reproduced here is a fragment of a Burrill entry for an unrelated term (likely Messuage or a proximate heading), and contains no entry for "met" as such. This confirms that "met" was not treated by 19th-century legal lexicographers as a term of art warranting independent definition. Its appearance in Burrill is incidental — a function word embedded in surrounding legal prose rather than a headword.
The Latin dictionary entry is instructive for historical research: the pronominal suffix met was common in Ciceronian and classical Latin, attaching to first- and second-person pronouns for emphasis. Early English common law texts borrowing from Roman law occasionally preserve this construction, and it should be read as an emphatic modifier rather than a standalone legal term.