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

Erin Foster’s runaway hit comedy series Nobody Wants This had Netflix viewers falling head over heels in love with the IRL meet-cute romance between agnostic podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Rabbi Noah Roklov (Adam Brody). —Antonia Blyth, Deadline, 18 June 2025

The attraction is instant between the two: a meet-cute, promptly followed by a public make-out session over dinner. —Tomris Laffly, Variety, 14 June 2025

The two pursue a relationship after a chance meet-cute in the grocery store, but are currently not together in the series. —Carson Blackwelder, People.com, 5 June 2025

Love Languages Image Sarah Huxley and Ping Loh have their meet-cute moment in Paris when Sarah, trying to avoid two aggressive mimes, stumbles on a street and Ping comes to her aid. —George Gene Gustines, New York Times, 1 June 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