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:
Together these stories represent the consequences of changes that began years ago, rather than a sudden cultural shift in the entertainment industry.
From BBC ● Nov. 14, 2026
As soon as news alerts began to hit passengers’ phones thanks to free Wi-Fi, attention temporarily turned away from “Tulsa King,” “Animals” and other in-flight entertainment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2026
He founded the Murray Group, a legal and consulting firm specializing in public policy and entertainment and was a senior vice president at the William Morris Agency.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 13, 2026
I watched Muslim American life become louder and more assured, as actors like Ramy Youssef and Mo Amer modeled success in entertainment.
From Slate ● Nov. 13, 2026
“It’s an arts and entertainment podcast based in Chicago,” Camille says.
From "South of Somewhere" by Kalena Miller
Superhero-based entertainments, as we’ve come to know them, are comedies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Today, dragons and dungeon crawls are common entertainments.
From Salon ● Jun. 24, 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
It is a property of adolescent entertainments from “Archie” to “Riverdale” that adults can be less than helpful — beside the point, if not actively dangerous.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2023
Evening fell, as it falls always on the entertainments of man, foretelling the solemnity of night and end.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
