meet cute

Meanings

Noun

• 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.
• Any such situation occurring in real life between a pair of people who are not yet acquainted, romantically or otherwise.

Verb

• Of characters in a story or people in real life: to meet each other in an adorable, amusing, or cute way.

Origin

• 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.