Meet cute

Etymology

The origin of the term is unknown but it appears to have been familiarly associated with Hollywood screenwriting by at least 1941. The earliest example given by the Oxford English Dictionary is from Anthony Boucher's mystery novel The Case of the Solid Key (1941), in which a character says "We met cute, as they say in story conferences." As this example implies, the term was already well-known, and in a 1996 The Paris Review interview, screenwriter Billy Wilder, referring to Ernst Lubitsch's 1938 screwball comedy film Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (in which two characters meet while shopping for pajamas, one seeking a pajama top and the other a pajama bottom), says that the concept was "a staple of romantic comedies back then". In George Axelrod's play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955), a character explains,

Several reviewers have used the term. Bosley Crowther, in his February 1964 review of Sunday in New York, writes that a character "is conveniently importuned by this attractive young fellow she happens to run into – to 'meet cute', as they say – on a Fifth Avenue bus". Film critics such as Roger Ebert and the Associated Press's Christy Lemire popularized the term in their reviews. In Ebert's DVD commentary for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which he co-wrote, he describes the scene where law student Emerson Thorne bumps into the female character Petronella Danforth. Ebert admits that he, as the screenwriter, wrote into the script a "classic Hollywood meet cute". He explains the meet cute as a scene "in which somebody runs into somebody else, and then something falls, and the two people began to talk, and their eyes meet and they realize that they are attracted to one another".

References

References

1. "Definition of MEET-CUTE".
2. (2001). "Oxford English Dictionary". Oxford University Press.
3. Crowther, Bosley. (1964-02-12). "Screen: Krasna Comedy: 'Sunday in New York' Stars Jane Fonda".
4. Ebert, Roger. (1999-10-22). "Three To Tango movie review & film summary (1999)".