meant to be
246
3.7
- idiom
:
destinado
- Just be who you're meant to be and you'll be free.
- never meant to be
- meant to be used
- meant to be read
it's not meant to be reality. And so
- it's not meant to be reality. And so
- Like if it's meant to be, let it be.
- But yeah, I was only meant to be in court for two hours.
- We are meant to be typically cold and hungry.
- And I was meant to be on a comedy stage.
- And Stevenson says it's meant to be ambiguous in that way.
- This was not meant to be a poignant scene.
- Yeah, that's meant to be the worst prison in the UK, right.
Examples
-
Yeah, guys, we're all meant to be eating healthy.
-
The second Doug laid eyes on me, we knew we were meant to be together.
-
This is not meant to be a historical account.
-
Like if it's meant to be, let it be.
-
But yeah, I was only meant to be in court for two hours.
-
It's what you were meant to be doing all along.
-
I had a feeling that it was meant to be.
-
This was meant to be.
-
And I was meant to be on a comedy stage.
-
She felt that their meeting was meant to be, as if fate had brought them together.
Synonyms
69
4.2
Certain to happen or be true
27
5.3
Certain to happen and not able to be changed
6
4.1
Sure to happen or meant to be sent to a certain place
1
9.9
Decided before it happens and cannot be changed, often because of fate or a god
Planned and not done by accident
Likely to happen or be true
Likely to happen soon and making people feel excited
In the simple natural way people think God wants things to be
Antonyms
How Inevitable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is compositionally derived from 'meant' (past of 'mean' = intended) plus the infinitive 'to be' (exist/happen), so a learner who knows the constituents can infer 'intended/expected to happen.' This follows a regular English pattern ('meant to + verb') and is cross-linguistically transparent, so the sense of destiny or intention is accessible to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Meant to be may come from the simple idea that something was meant, or planned, to be. Imagine two people who keep meeting as if a plan brought them together; that's why we say meant to be when we think something is 'intended or destined to happen'.