podictionary

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The podcast for word lovers

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Preview last show from Sun Nov 30 22:01:18 CST 2008

Title: interview - podictionary 900

Description:

Two situations come to mind when I hear the word interview.

One is a journalist interviewing some celebrity or politician or even doing what they call a streeter, talking to Jane Q Public.

The other situation is a job interview.

In both cases there is a sense of greater importance to the interview than there would be with a simple encounter.  People prepare for interviews, or they should.  There’s usually some kind of consequence or risk associated.

The thing is being recorded in the case of a journalists’ interview.

Whether or not various facts or answers are recorded in a job interview, the outcome holds importance; people remember their impression of you long enough to recommend hiring you or not.

This sense of importance seems to have been part of the character of the word interview ever since it appeared in English.  But the component parts of the word, if taken literally would disqualify some of the things we call interviews from being interviews.

The word comes from French and was once two words entre voir literally meaning “to see between” but more figuratively “to see each other.”

By that definition telephone interviews would be an impossibility.

The word shows up first in English in the time of King Henry VIII, the early 1500s.  As I said, from the start there was a heightened sense of importance to an interview.  The Oxford English Dictionary says:

In early times, especially a formal or ceremonial meeting of princes or great persons, such as that of Henry VIII and Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

What was the Field of the Cloth of Gold you ask?

Well as an example of how formal the formality of an interview might be it was a doozie.

First of all, from almost 500 years distance we might think that King Henry VIII was kind of like an American president might be these days, first among equals, leader of the western world, that sort of thing.  Henry certainly had a reputation that survives to this day.

But in fact Henry was a second stringer.

The two European powers of the day were France and the Hapsburg Empire.  This Field of the Cloth of Gold interview was one of a series of meetings that Henry had as the two powers maneuvered to gain him as an ally.

But talk about taking things seriously.

Compare the Field of the Cloth of Gold to the recent G20 summit that was supposed to be talking about something pretty important, the world economy. That lasted less than a weekend.

The Field of the Cloth of Gold started out with the re-landscaping of an entire valley, a temporary castle was built and thousands of tents and pavilions were set up.  Then the event itself; not just a weekend, but a full 17 days were dedicated to “getting to know you” between the royals.

That’s an interview!

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