When I first arrived in America I was bemused by how seemingly polite Midwesterners would say "It was quite nice to meet you." As these phrases were generally the conclusion of five minute first-meetings I'm sure that quite=moderately was the accurate judgment of meeting me (maybe even an overly good judgment!).
But the conversational convention most places seems to be that you should err on the side of effusiveness in saying how nice it was to meet someone.
The OED notes that the contemporary American usage is "usually felt to be old-fashioned or stilted, and has become less common," another example of how word use in the United States reveals its seventeenth century separation from English English.
Posted by robe0419 at June 23, 2004 02:25 PM