human interest

human interest

Arousing interest or concern or sympathy for an occurrence or a person. The term appears most often in connection with a journalistic story and has been employed so much it qualifies as a cliché. Seemingly very modern, it was actually used in 1860 by Charles Dickens in an article in which he said that he traveled for the sake of human interest.
See also: human, interest
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • of interest
  • lucky for you
  • luckily for you
  • a one-off
  • sexy
  • better late than never
  • bonus
  • Bonus!
  • gonzo
  • a movable feast
References in classic literature
He had no friends in the sense of companions; to all outward appearance his life was solitary and devoid of any human interest.
Familiar as it stands in the writer's recollection,--for it has been an object of curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture of a longpast epoch, and as the scene of events more full of human interest, perhaps, than those of a gray feudal castle,--familiar as it stands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more difficult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught the sunshine.
And so keenly did men feel the human interests of such things as were now taught, that we have come to call grammar, rhetoric, poetry, Greek and Latin the Humanities, and the professor who teaches these thing the professor of Humanity.
To those who live in the narrow circle of human interests and human feelings, there ever exists, unheeded, almost unnoticed, before their very eyes, the most humbling proofs of their own comparative insignificance in the scale of creation, which, in the midst of their admitted mastery over the earth and all it contains, it would be well for them to consider, if they would obtain just views of what they are and what they were intended to be.
Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments.
A new sensation of comfort and relief came over him when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of other human interests entirely aloof from his own and just as legitimate as those that occupied him.
It was Wakefield's unprecedented fate to retain his original share of human sympathies, and to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his reciprocal influence on them.
The woman was alive in the world, and working in the world; and yet (so far as all human interests were concerned) she was as completely out of the world as if she had been screwed down in her coffin, and laid in her grave.
She has a keen interest in writing about issues that plague the common person, and will never turn down a human interest story.
Scooper app users can explore up to date news in categories such as politics, lifestyle sports, business, tech, human interest stories and opinion articles, while the app is also a great platform for fun videos, gifts, quizzes and other branded contents,' she explained.
They are not human interest; they are cynical intrusion.
Mitford continuously leavens his military-topographical route-and-fortress sections with much of immediate human interest -- military medicine, transportation logistics, honey and cheese in the Roman diet, among them, with asides on famines, feasts, ferries, festivals, feuds, fevers, fire brigades, and floods, to offer a random sampling.
MIRPUR -- In spite of the influx of series of TV channels in the private sector the world over, the importance of Radio had not ever been reduced in view of its being the swift source of infotainment because of its specific means of functioning for quick dissemination of information and knowledge for human interest across the globe.
BANKING AND CREDIT NEWS-February 13, 2018-Captain401 rebrands to Human Interest
Please keep in mind that since this publication is meant as a "B2B" monthly, business features, photos and articles are what we focus on and not general human interest, hard daily news or sports.