fateful meeting
1
5.3
- noun
:
encuentro fatídico
- Or has that fateful meeting already occurred, along with the attendant love affair, in some past to which this scene is about to flash us back?
Examples
-
In my first fateful meeting with Adam, I slid a piece of paper across the table within ten minutes of us sitting down—the draft storyboard:
Blog text (24) -
Has the fateful meeting already occurred, or does he have it in store?
Academic text (2011) -
In addition to leading up to that fateful meeting between Ted and his future wife,
Blog text (1) -
It's as if her whole life has been a prelude to this moment, this fateful meeting that changes everything.
-
It had been four weeks since the fateful meeting with Ivor.
Fiction book (1990) -
We laughed at it, persuaded that anything carrying us to our predestined and fateful meeting with Ed and Grace couldn't possibly crash; would the gods deprive themselves of such rich entertainment?
Fiction book (1992) -
That fateful meeting changed the course of my life forever.
-
Years later, I still think about our fateful meeting at the café.
-
She described their fateful meeting as the moment everything began to change.
Synonyms
5
7.6
A very important event that decides the future for a person or country
Antonyms
How Significant
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'fateful' (having crucial/decisive consequences) modifying 'meeting' (an encounter), so the phrase literally denotes an encounter with major consequences. This adjective+noun pattern is a standard, cross-linguistically common composition, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The noun fateful meeting comes from the idea of 'fate'. Here, fateful means something that decides what will happen and meeting is a single chance encounter, so the phrase means 'an encounter that can change a person's life'.