A phrase from historical newspaper personal ads, explained with real examples from the archive.
A meeting. To grant an interview was to agree to meet in person.
| Type | Historical language |
|---|---|
| Category | Period vocabulary |
| Earliest example in the archive | February 20, 1862, New York Herald |
| Most common | 1850s to the 1910s |
In nineteenth-century English an interview was simply a face-to-face meeting, and personal ads used it with great formality. A man on an Omaha streetcar in 1904 asked a young woman to grant interview; a New York writer in 1862 asked for an appointment for an interview; an 1898 Seattle ad offered a personal interview by appointment.
IF MRS. D. E. HAS RETURNED TO NEW YORK, SHE will much oblige her friend (who had the pleasure of paying some attention to her in the cars to Baltimore on Sunday night,…
AM A NEW YORK MAN, young, good-looking, clever; returned this week from Atlin solely for purpose meeting young maiden or widow matrimonially inclined with some capital…
FARNAM car, between 3 and 4 Sunday; will good-looking young woman dressed in black grant interview to tall gentleman who sat opposite?
Today it would be a first date, or meeting up.
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How this fits into 170 years of personal ad shorthand: From Object Matrimony to LTR: How Personal Ads Learned to Talk in Code.
All dictionary entries · The Personals Archive · How to write a personal ad
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