meet cute
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈmiːt ˌkjuːt/
ipa: /ˈmit ˌkjuːt/
Forms: form: meets cute
form: meeting cute
form: met cute
form: met cute
form: cute-meet
form: meet-cute
Etymology: 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.
Senses: examples: text: "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."
ref: 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:
text: "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.
ref: 1943, John P[hillips] Marquand, “Well, Hardly That”, in So Little Time, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, pages 287–288:
text: 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.
ref: 1997 November 25, Robert Hofler, “Film: Love and Death”, in The Advocate, number 747, Los Angeles, Calif.: Liberation Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 59:
text: 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?"
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 2007, Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall, Moynagh Sullivan, Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 117:
text: If you're not married, then this is a cute meet. I'm a sucker for meeting cute.
ref: 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:
text: Midge and Augie meet cute at the diner, but their relationship blooms while they’re in their respective rental cabins.
ref: 2023 June 15, Manohla Dargis, “‘Asteroid City’ Review: Our Town and Country”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
glosses: Of characters in a story or people in real life: to meet each other in an adorable, amusing, or cute way.