word choice - Can 'see' meaning 'meet' be used intransitively in the same way?

This sentence came up in a conversation with a friend...

What time are we going to see?

When I asked what it was we were going to see, he explained that he was using 'see' to mean 'meet'. So he was asking when we were going to meet... At that point a full blown argument started about the validity of using see for meet in this exact structure.

My question is... is this sentence structure with the intention of meaning MEET correct? can SEE ever be used to mean MEET in the exact way above? I am not asking about informal or spoken language or implied meanings. I want to know if this is a valid in a formal written communication.

Answer

No, you can't, not in the form your friend said, because see would need an object in this type of structure - otherwise, as you yourself noted, it's unclear what it is that you would be seeing. The sentence could be taken to mean either something like "what time will we see (on the clock/watch) when we look at it?" or some other unusual meaning that is far what your friend was actually going for.

You can, however, say What time are we going to see each other?, and this would be perfectly correct.

Note that What time are we going to meet? not only does not require the "each other" but in fact sounds bad with it, because "meet" already implies the "each other" meaning.

So, to recap: What time are we going to...

• meet - OK


• see - not ok


• see each other - OK


• meet each other - technically OK, but sounds a tad strange