My husband tells me that he has discovered the most dominant element of my personality - namely, I don't like change. As he has had the dubious privilege of spending his life with me pretty much continuously since the day of Brezhnev's death - also known as the day we first met - I think he probably has as good a perspective on the topic as anyone. This dislike of change - if I accept it exists (and actually I do) - may explain why I get het up about new bits of language that suddenly appear and begin infesting every journalistic piece I read.
Which brings me to today's gripe - a new (at least to me) coinage that makes me feel queasy each time I see it:
"meet cute".
It's round the wrong way, it makes no sense, it is maddening. Maybe only because it's new? I don't know. I just think it's disgusting.
I'm not sure I've seen "meet cute" used as a substantive. But I don't read movie reviews often, and I don't know where else the expression is likely to occur.
ReplyDeleteMeet cute? What does it mean? My least favourite innovation in language is "long story short."
ReplyDeleteI kept reading it in the kinds of profiles that weekend papers are full of: "When I got to the place we'd agreed to meet, X was there before me, a soft-spoken man whose white hair belies his young age and whose piercing eyes speak of a penetrating intelligence. He wore chinos and a pale blue chambray shirt. When I asked him how he came to be collaborating with B on this latest project, he gave a half smile. "It was a kind of meet cute I guess", he replied, with a chuckle.' ZMKC
ReplyDeletePerhaps it will catch on a substantive here once chambray shirts do.
DeleteI must confess that I have since encountered "meet cute" as a substantive, one spoken, once in print. I don't think chambray shirts were involved in either case.
ReplyDelete