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I made up the sentence:

A and B agreed to meet each other at 8 a.m. tomorrow to sign the contract.

  1. How to express this sentence idiomatically using the verb "fix" instead of "agree"?

  2. Is it correct to use "agreed" instead of "agree", if the time of the meeting hasn't come yet?

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    Yes, agreed is correct because at this point in time, they have already done the agreeing, but they have not yet met each other.
    – FeliniusRex - gone
    Commented Jul 12, 2021 at 1:43
  • I think it's mostly a British thing to use "fix" in the sense of "agree to meet" so I can't comment on that, but "They agreed to meet tomorrow to sign the contract, and fixed a time of 8 am" is a natural way to use "fix" to mean "establish" a time.
    – gotube ♦
    Commented Jul 12, 2021 at 1:56
  • Why try and make it something else when it's perfectly fine as is? Yes, you can fix or set a time in English.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jul 22, 2021 at 17:07
  • I want to learn how to use "fix". Maybe "A and B fixed it to meet each other at 8:00 tomorrow to ..." or "A and B fixed a meeting for tomorrow at 8:00 ..." or "A and B fixed 8:00 of tomorrow for a meeting to ..." ? Would some British person help me with this?
    – Vova
    Commented Jul 28, 2021 at 16:52

2 Answers 2

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I'm a British English speaker and the idiom only sounds natural to me as either:

fixed a time

fixed a place

Sometimes people swap out 'time' or 'place' for words that mean the same thing, such as:

fixed a date

fixed a location

But I've never heard 'fixed a meeting' and it took a while to realise what it meant. Gotube's comment has the most natural wording:

"They agreed to meet tomorrow to sign the contract, and fixed a time of 8 am"

Edit: Both the Cambridge and Collins dictionaries have 'to fix' listed as a verb meaning 'to arrange,' so maybe it's a regional thing. I'm just pointing out that I'm Northern and I'm not used to hearing it.

I also want to add that I've heard 'fix a price' before too, along with 'Can you fix it for me?' meaning 'Can you arrange it for me?' (except the last one sounds like London slang, whereas 'fix a time/date/price' is used throughout the UK).

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I think that the comments address 1. pretty well.

As for the second part of your question...

If you were to say

A and B agree to meet each other at 8 a.m. tomorrow to sign the contract

That sounds more like you are describing an action as it is taking place. Imagine someone narrating a scene...

A and B walk over to the table. They sit down. They talk. They agree to meet each other at 8 a.m. tomorrow...

So it depends on the context.

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