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entertainment

UK/ˌɛn.təˈteɪn.mənt/US/ˌɛn.(t)ɚˈteɪn.mənt/
nounB1Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,106 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: entertainments

Entertainment is performance provided to give people pleasure. Live entertainment, the entertainment industry, book the entertainment.

At a wedding or an event it means the specific act hired. As an industry it covers film, music, television and games, and it competes for attention rather than for money — the constraint on it is hours in the day. Note entertain; and that the French root means to hold together or maintain.

Nikias Painter · CC BY 2.5

Definitions of entertainment

  1. 1nounentertainmentPerformance provided to give people pleasure.B1

    “The hotel provides live music and other entertainment every evening.”

entertainment is a diversion.

Where it comes from

Old French entretenement comes from entretenir, to hold together, from Latin inter plus tenere, to hold. Maintain and tenant come from the same holding.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ten-

  2. Old French

    entretenement

  3. Middle English

    entretenement — support, maintenance

  4. English, today

    entertainment

From Middle English entretenement (“support, maintenance”), from Old French entretenement; see entertain. Morphologically entertain + -ment.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Weddings & Celebrations

Practise this word

entertainment in the wild

  • The experience of being entertained is strongly associated with amusement, so one common understanding is fun and laughter, although many entertainments serve serious purposes.

    Entertainment

  • Therefore, what appears as entertainment may also be a means of achieving insight or intellectual growth.

    Entertainment

  • Under Vince's leadership, the WWF expanded from a regional promotion into the dominant force in professional wrestling and a global entertainment company.

    WWE

  • WWE is an American entertainment company and professional wrestling promotion based in Stamford, Connecticut.

    List of WWE personnel

  • Many topics that it covered became the subjects of new magazines, including Amusement Business in 1961 to cover outdoor entertainment, so that Billboard could focus on music.

    Billboard (magazine)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • entertain
  • entertaining