meet cute

See also: meet-cute

English

Etymology

Accidentally coined by director Ernst Lubitsch, who had difficulty speaking English, to describe the encounter between the characters played by Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife.

Noun

meet cute (plural meet cutes)

  1. (narratology) A situation in a film, television series, etc. in which a potential or future romantic couple meet for the first time in a way that is considered adorable, entertaining, or amusing.
    • March 26, 2018, A. A. Dowd, AV Club Steven Spielberg finds fun, and maybe even a soul, in the pandering pastiche of Ready Player One
      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.
  2. any such situation in real life, also between non-romantically involved pairs of people
    A short meet-cute dialogue ensues, detailing exactly how many hours of interviews Levitt had agreed to (two), and exactly how much of his time Dubner actually ended up taking (three days).

Alternative forms

  • meet-cute
  • cute meet Billy Mernit, in his textbook "Writing the Romantic Comedy" (HarperCollins, 2000), modifies the term for use by rom-com screenwriters as a noun-title for this beat (e.g. "The cute meet in my script involves an exploding juicer," etc.).
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