meet-cute
Americannoun
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meet-cutes
plural
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(in a movie or TV show) a chance meeting between two characters who do not know each other, starting a chain of events that typically leads to a romantic relationship.
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a similar incident in real life.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Their meet-cute is more of a meet-annoying, but different strokes for different folks.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
“The Bone People” follows the trajectory of a romantic comedy—a woman finds love in a meet-cute, loses that love and, after many travails, finds it again, even better than before.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026
It is not quite the classic meet-cute, though cute enough, contusions aside: Stan is less concerned about his head than with the location of Cynthia’s bathroom.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 23, 2025
And his meet-cute with Brando spawned a sitcom, “The Famous Teddy Z,” about a Hollywood star who picks out a mailroom clerk as his agent.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2024
We had the meet-cute, so I allowed us the full rom-com text treatment this weekend.
From "Love, Hate & Other Filters" by Samira Ahmed
Arriving in Hollywood in the ‘30s, he soon mastered glittery Lubitsch-style meet-cutes while also embracing dark themes in films like “Double Indemnity” and “The Lost Weekend.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2025
Frustrated by bots, subscription costs and high effort-to-reward ratios, Gen Z is fleeing the apps in hope of real-life meet-cutes.
From New York Times ● Apr. 30, 2024
However, it's a promising sign that meet-cutes haven't entirely fallen out of favor with moviegoers.
From Reuters ● Apr. 3, 2022
Dating apps are an excellent option, as is asking your own friends for potential blind dates or slightly pre-engineered meet-cutes.
From Slate ● May 6, 2021
That opening number, about the irresistible charm of holiday movie meet-cutes, is an earworm.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 13, 2019
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
