meet-cute

noun

ˈmēt-ˌkyüt 

variants or less commonly meet cute

plural meet-cutes also meet cutes

: a cute, charming, or amusing first encounter between romantic partners (as in a movie)

It's a meet-cute where they fall immediately in love: her because he's handsome; him because she forgets a pen to write with.

—Mark Abraham

Rom-com tropes like the "meet-cute" are so tired that you can't just spoof them—you have to spoof the spoofs …

—Stephan Lee

… upper-middlebrow "meet cutes" such as in Nora Ephron's popular You've Got Mail …

—James Wolcott

meet cute intransitive verb

or less commonly meet-cute

met cute also met-cute; meeting cute also meeting-cute; meets cute also meets-cute

In a charmingly old-fashioned plot, they meet cute, and she thinks it's true love …

—David Hiltbrand

… a picture-perfect love story about a man who uses paper planes to track down the woman he "met cute" at the train station.

—Huma Qureshi

… leading two people on a chase through the streets of Paris until they meet-cute in front of the Eiffel Tower.

—Deb Amlen

Did you know?

Isn’t it cute how two words can be introduced to each other and become an inseparable pair soon after? Well, that’s exactly what happened when meet and cute got together in 1952. The duo was spotted in The New York Times Book Review in 1952 in reference to an unexpected rendezvous: “This may well be, in magazine parlance, the neatest meet-cute of the week—the story of a ghost-writer who falls in love with a ghost.” Today the word is used often to refer to such encounters in films and television series (especially rom-coms and sitcoms). Writers of meet-cutes often develop plots by creating situations in which characters clash in personality, or by creating embarrassing situations in which two eventual romantic partners will meet, or by creating a misunderstanding between characters who will separate but become friends in the end.

Examples of meet-cute in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Photo: Francois Duhamel / Columbia Pictures While nothing beats a romantic meet-cute while traveling solo, these days, such serendipitous encounters—sans the apps—tend to be rare. —Deanna Romano, Vogue, 20 Feb. 2025

As narrated by Austin and revealed in flashbacks, his parents’ courtship traveled an ultra-brief road from meet-cute to pregnancy, and Scott and Teresa didn’t so much fall in love as do the right thing. —Sheri Linden, New York Times, 20 Feb. 2025

There's also their unexpected meet-cute, involving a runaway Great Dane set loose on the streets of D.C., inspired by an experience of a woman Holmes knew. —Carly Tagen-Dye, People.com, 25 Feb. 2025

Where the meet-cute is, like, at a composting facility. —Dan Heching, CNN, 20 Feb. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1952, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for meet-cute

• acute
• aleut
• astute
• beetroot
• breadfruit
• cheroot
• commute
• compute
• confute
• dilute
• dispute
• elute

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Kids Definition

meet-cute

noun

ˈmēt-ˌkyüt

: a cute, charming, or amusing first encounter between romantic partners (as in a movie)

meet cute verb