In the course of thousands of quotidien posts over more than a decade, I have made my share of typographical, grammatical and lexigraphical errors. I always appreciate it when readers point these out so that they can be corrected. This week, several readers have asked if I had intended to use the word "meet" in the title my recent post concerning former Chancellor William Chandler's ruling in Fogel v. U.S. Energy Systems, Inc., 2007 Del. Ch. LEXIS 178 - When a Meeting of Directors is not Meet.
The title was actually a bit of wordplay. As an adjective, "meet" means right, proper or fitting. For example, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible translated this line from the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:32 as "It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." In the original Greek text, the verb is ἔδει, which I would translate as "it is needful" or "it is necessary". This usage of "meet" is not unknown to the courts. For example, in Purefoy v. Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Co., 567 F.2d 268 (1977), the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote: "It is meet that our gratitude be put of record". Another example of this usage can be found in the poem " The Laws of the Navy" by Royal Navy officer Ronald A. Hopwood:
"If the fairway be crowded with shipping,
Beating homeward the harbor to win,
It is meet that, lest any should suffer,
The steamers pass cautiously in."
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