- [uncountable, countable] the soft part of an animal or a bird that can be eaten as food; a particular type of this
- a piece/slice of meat
- horse meat (= from a horse)
- meat-eating animals
- Do you eat meat?
- Their diet consists of lean meat and vegetables.
- Store raw meat on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.
- cured meat (= treated with smoke, salt, etc to preserve it)
- Many processed meats have unhealthy levels of sodium.
- meat products
- Use the highest quality cuts of meat, fish or poultry.
- There's not much meat on this chop.
- (figurative, humorous) There’s not much meat on her (= she is very thin).
Homophones meat | meetmeat meet/miːt//miːt/- meat noun
- I won't have any meat, thank you—I'm a vegetarian.
- meet verb
- I'll meet you at the station when your train gets in.
Extra ExamplesTopics Fooda1- I'm not a great meat eater.
- He buys fresh meat and fish daily.
- Fry the meat in a little olive oil.
- She always buys the cheaper cuts of meat.
- Simmer the meat for 30 minutes until tender.
- That meat smells rotten.
- The animals do not hunt and rarely consume meat.
- These pies have a low meat content.
- Turn the meat frequently to brown it.
- recipes for simple meat dishes
- a plate of cold meats
- His favourite food is meat and vegetable stew.
- They make fully cooked, ready-to-eat meat products.
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- fresh
- bad
- rancid
- …
- bit
- chunk
- lump
- …
- consume
- eat
- chew
- …
- be off
- go off
- rot
- …
- ball
- broth
- dish
- …
Definitions on the go
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- [uncountable] meat (of something) the important or interesting part of something synonym substance
- This chapter contains the real meat of the writer's argument.
- Let's get right to the meat of the matter and address the problem.
Word OriginOld English mete ‘food’ or ‘article of food’ (as in sweetmeat), of Germanic origin.
Idioms
See meat in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee meat in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic Englishdead meat
- (informal) in serious trouble
- If anyone finds out, you're dead meat.
easy meat
- a person who seems easy to defeat or cheat
- Rogue traders saw elderly people as easy meat for overcharging.
meat and drink to somebody (British English)
- something that somebody enjoys very much
- This degree of chaos is meat and drink to Guy.
- something that is a normal thing to deal with for somebody
- This kind of research task is meat and drink to these students.
one man’s meat is another man’s poison
- (saying) used to say that different people like different things; what one person likes very much, another person does not like at all
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meat