meet cute

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See also: meet-cute

English

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WOTD – 15 February 2019

Etymology

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Accidentally coined by German-American film director Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947), who had difficulty speaking English, to describe the encounter between the characters played by Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper in the 1938 film Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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meet cute (plural meet cutes)

  1. (narratology, informal) A situation in a film, television series, etc., in which a potential romantic couple meet for the first time in a way that is considered adorable, amusing, or cute.
    Synonym: cute meet
    • 1989, Bruce Babington, Peter William Evans, Affairs to Remember: The Hollywood Comedy of the Sexes, Manchester, New York, N.Y.: Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 11:
      If this is a distortion of reality, it is a knowingly utopian gesture, and the wit of such conceits lies in placing in tension the ideal with the real and so being more than a series of fancy ‘meet cutes’: […]
    • 2013, Jaime Woo, “How to Find Love on Grindr (if You Hafta)”, in Meet Grindr: How One App Changed the Way We Connect, Canada: [Lulu.com], →ISBN, page 108, column 1:
      The hunt for love saturates Western culture. […] Romantic comedies have characters discover one another serendipitously, called "meet-cutes." The lead clumsily spills a drink on his future love interest, setting off a chain of events to love. Meet-cutes affirm the idea that possibility is all around us: love can happen anywhere, at anytime, and with anyone.
    • 2014 June 26, A. A. Dowd, “Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler Spoof Rom-com Clichés in They Came Together”, in The A.V. Club‎[1], archived from the original on 7 December 2017:
      In some respects, it might be too faithful to the genre it savages; as in many real rom-coms, the energy flags during the plot’s backstretch, and audiences may share the drifting interest of Kyle (Bill Hader) and Karen (Ellie Kemper), who come to regret ever asking Joel and Molly to chronicle their meet-cute.
    • 2018 March 26, A. A. Dowd, “Steven Spielberg Finds Fun, and maybe even a Soul, in the Pandering Pastiche of Ready Player One”, in The A.V. Club‎[2], archived from the original on 31 May 2018:
      When Wade first crosses paths with Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), the ass-kicking fellow “gunter” (or egg hunter) with whom he becomes infatuated, the pair’s meet cute is predicated on the swapping of favorite pop-culture quotes.
    • 2021 December 26, Alys Fowler, “My winter of love: I was homesick in New York. The quiet Danish poet was just what I was longing for”, in The Guardian‎[3]:
      Café Pick Me Up was a cosy little place with a low pressed-metal ceiling, crammed full of tiny tables, with French cafe chairs and mellow lighting. If you were to write a romcom featuring a meet cute, you’d set it there.
  2. (by extension, informal) Any such situation occurring in real life between a pair of people who are not yet acquainted, romantically or otherwise.

Alternative forms

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Translations

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Verb

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meet cute (third-person singular simple present meets cute, present participle meeting cute, simple past and past participle met cute)

  1. (intransitive, informal) Of characters in a story or people in real life: to meet each other in an adorable, amusing, or cute way. [from early 20th c.]
    • 1937 May 22, Alan Campbell, “They Meet Cute”, in The New Yorker, volume 13, number 14, New York, N.Y.: New Yorker Magazine, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 37, column 1:
      "The rest of the script is fine, boys," said Mr. Trumpett. "You've got nice situations and I like the way you've handled your story line and I like your finish—we're going to have a nice little picture when we get through with it—but, frankly, I don't like your beginning. They don't meet cute."
    • 1943, John P[hillips] Marquand, “Well, Hardly That”, in So Little Time, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, pages 287–288:
      "Perhaps they don't meet cute enough," Mae said. You could not get away from the studio jargon. "Meeting cute" meant roughly that our hero did something like stepping on a banana peel, losing his balance and sliding on his behind up to the girl, though of course there were infinite variations.
    • 1997 November 25, Robert Hofler, “Film: Love and Death”, in The Advocate, number 747, Los Angeles, Calif.: Liberation Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 59:
      What does it say about the new Hollywood that a gay character dying of AIDS complications is now a plot device in a movie romance? Yes, Robert Downey Jr. dies so that Wesley Snipes and Nastassja Kinski can meet cute (as screenwriters like to say) in Mike Figgis's One Night Stand.
    • 2002 September, Rob Byrnes, “Life before Frank … and Why I Particularly Hate Nicholas Hafner”, in The Night We Met, New York, N.Y.: Kensington Books, →ISBN, page 2:
      And, of course, we met cute. / "Hey," he said, approaching me as I stood alone back to the wall of a Greenwich Village bar late one Friday night. "Aren't you a friend of John's?" / "I know a lot of Johns," I replied dryly. / "I thought so," he said and flashed a dazzling, inviting smile. "Can I buy you a beer?"
    • 2007, Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall, Moynagh Sullivan, Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture, Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 117:
      The viewer as outsider is invited to contemplate the ‘primitive vitality’ of an alien, multi-ethnic, and lower-class culture. In [James] Cameron’s screenplay [of Titanic (1997)], Rose (Kate Winslet), a young society woman, ‘meets cute’ with Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), a poor artist who has won a lottery earning him a passage on the maiden voyage of the fated liner.
    • 2008, Lori Wilde [pseudonym; Laurie Blalock Vanzura], Addicted to Love, New York, N.Y.: Forever, →ISBN; republished as chapter 1, in Valentine, Texas, New York, N.Y.: Forever, 2018, →ISBN:
      If you're not married, then this is a cute meet. I'm a sucker for meeting cute.
    • 2023 June 15, Manohla Dargis, “‘Asteroid City’ Review: Our Town and Country”, in The New York Times‎[5], →ISSN:
      Midge and Augie meet cute at the diner, but their relationship blooms while they’re in their respective rental cabins.

Alternative forms

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Translations

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Further reading

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Anagrams

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