Work and applying for a job

The list for the weeks between two jobs. At the centre of it is l’entretien, the interview, and it is the same word as English « entertain ». Both come from old French entretenir, from Latin inter and tenere: to hold together, to keep something going. French kept the holding sense in two directions at once — you hold a conversation going, which gives un entretien d’embauche, and you keep a machine or a building going, which gives les frais d’entretien, maintenance costs. English took the branch where what is kept going is a guest, arriving at hospitality and then at show business; the original sense survives only in « to entertain a proposal », where an idea is held long enough to be considered. So the noun that names the most important hour of a job hunt is a cousin of the word for a floor show, and the two are the same grip.