Meniscus shapes from a simulation of a plate immersing into an infinitely deep liquid bath, for a range of outer length scales, have been obtained numerically. These have been compared with the leading‐order prediction from a three‐region asymptotic analysis done in the double limit, Capillary number, Ca→0,LS/LC→0, with Ca ln(LC/LS) ofO(1), whereLSandLCrepresent the slip length and an outer macroscopic length, respectively. For Ca<0.01, the numerically computed and the perturbation solutions show excellent agreement. Within this range of Ca, the meniscus slope at a distance 10LSfrom the dynamic contact line is geometry independent, that is, does not vary with changes in the outer lengthLC. The interface slope at this point can serve as an appropriatematerialboundary condition for the outer problem. For 0.01<Ca<0.1, the intermediate region solution continues to closely fit the numerically generated solution, while the match in the outer region begins to degrade. By monitoring the pressure difference between the surrounding inviscid gas phase and arbitrarily chosen point in the liquid, we attribute this breakdown to infiltration of viscous effects into the outer region, so that static capillarity does not adequately describe meniscus shapes in this regime. For Ca≳0.1, there is no match between the numerical and perturbation solutions in both the intermediate and outer regions, indicating that higher‐order contributions must be accounted for in the perturbation solutions. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.