"Had" for future time

Question

Can I use "had" for the future when something scheduled in the future is postponed?

A) what is your plan tomorrow?

B) I had an interview tomorrow, but they postponed it to next week. So I am free tomorrow.

Is this usage of "had" wrong?

Answer 1

No, this usage is not wrong.

What it means is that, at some time in the past, you had an appointment planned for an interview tomorrow. Up until you heard that it had been postponed, you would have been able to say:

I have an interview tomorrow...

After hearing that the interview has been cancelled, you no longer have a meeting tomorrow, so you move it into the past and say

I had an interview tomorrow...

Answer 2

Adding to other great answers, you need to understand that there is a "relative clause" or "past participle + preposition" omitted in the sentence as follows:

I had an interview (which was) scheduled for tomorrow.

As an adverb, tomorrow can modify the verb to have, however, it is impossible to do it contextually.

As others explained, it is not likely to cause confusion. However, if you don't want to cause any confusion, it is better to use "scheduled for" before "tomorrow".

Answer 3

As the other answers say, there is nothing wrong with "I had an interview tomorrow". You could use a different idiom to convey the same idea:

I was supposed to have an interview tomorrow, but ...

The "was supposed to" idiom conveys that originally an event or occurrence was planned, but either the event was definitely cancelled or it is now unclear whether the event will happen. At the time of speaking, the originally-planned event could be in the past or present or future.

Examples:

I was supposed to drive him to the airport tomorrow, but I haven't heard from him today so I'm not sure whether I will be going.

 

I was supposed to take my final exams yesterday afternoon, but it rained all morning so school closed early and the exams were postponed.

Answer 4

The tenses in this sentence are a bit twisted. "Had" refers to the past. But now you have a situtation where in the past, an interview was scheduled. At some later date, but still in the past, the interview was cancelled.

I suppose one could quibble and say that "I had an interview tomorrow" is bad grammar because the tenses are wrong. One could say that the correct wording would be something more like, "I had scheduled an interview for tomorrow, but now that interview has been canceled." But it's not necessary to be so awkward: we know what you mean. It it not that the interview was in the past, and thus "had", but that the scheduling of the interview was in the past.

Unless you're a time traveller of course! Maybe you went to the interview on Wednesday, then travelled back in time to Tuesday to tell someone that you "had the interview tomorrow"! I recall a great line from a science fiction movie once where a character is talking to a time traveller. He mentions where he is from, and then says, "Have you ever been there?" And the time traveller replies, "Yes, but not yet."