OK. That's the second time now. I feel like in the last 48 hours, "meet-cute" or "meetcute" has been introduced as a New Word and everyone got the memo but me.
It’s not new. It’s been a thing in writing about rom
coms since at least the early 90s, if not earlier.
Edit: Wikipedia cites a first usage in print of 1941, which implies it was already a common trope at the time: 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."
Also, everyone should watch Roman Holiday because honestly they never needed to make another romcom after that and the meet cute is the sweetest you'll ever see.
But it was largely limited to professional storywriters, Hollywood / Broadway types. The internet spread their lingo much more widely, and terms like that have become more common and fashionable in recent years.
OK. That's the second time now. I feel like in the last 48 hours, "meet-cute" or "meetcute" has been introduced as a New Word and everyone got the memo but me.