entertainment
Americannoun
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entertainments
plural
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the act of entertaining; agreeable occupation for the mind; diversion; amusement.
Solving the daily crossword puzzle is an entertainment for many.
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something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, especially a performance of some kind.
The highlight of the ball was an elaborate entertainment.
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hospitable provision for the needs and wants of guests.
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a divertingly adventurous, comic, or picaresque novel.
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Obsolete. maintenance in service.
noun
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the act or art of entertaining or state of being entertained
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an act, production, etc, that entertains; diversion; amusement
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of entertainment
Explanation
Entertainment is amusement, usually involving a performance. The clown at a birthday party, a Broadway show, a stadium rock concert, your friends fighting over the last potato chip––these are all forms of entertainment. Entertainment is from the Old French word entretenir meaning hold together or support. It was associated with hospitality––when you entertained a guest, you were keeping them happy. From there, it came to mean amuse or distract. The entertainment is the amusement or the distraction––we talk about theatrical entertainment as shows, visual entertainment as the stuff you like to look at, and audio entertainment as mostly music.
Vocabulary lists containing entertainment
Media Literacy - High School
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Media Literacy - Middle School
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Media Literacy - Introductory
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
At the time, the city’s flourishing entertainment and real estate industries shielded some ultrawealthy residents from a national recession.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
“It’s a reversal of California economic policy as it relates to the entertainment industry in an unhelpful and uncompetitive direction,” said Hilary Krane, CAA’s chief legal officer, in an interview.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026
American Airlines spent much of the past decade phasing out seatback screens from its Boeing 737s and Airbus A320-family jets, arguing that most travellers preferred to stream entertainment on their own devices.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Tributes poured in for the couple from across entertainment, luxury and politics.
From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026
Without question, the dogs were the most dependable source of entertainment.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
Today, dragons and dungeon crawls are common entertainments.
From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2026
Meghan Kobza’s “The Masquerade” unmasks the festivities of 18th-century London, where the commercial “middling sort” acquired the numbers and money to emulate the private entertainments of kings and aristocrats.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
"Christmas football was originally rooted in a wider tradition of communal entertainments," Professor Martin Johnes of Swansea University told BBC Sport.
From BBC ● Dec. 24, 2025
Colliding art and science melds these opposing sides, while providing a subtle sense of conflict on which all popular entertainments depend.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2024
They would sit together at meals and go in groups to attend community entertainments.
From "Son" by Lois Lowry
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
