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:
After Thursday's announcement, Hearn said Joshua's contract specifically prevented White and American sports entertainment company TKO from having a promotional role, claiming Netflix had not been made aware of that provision.
From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2026
OK, let’s shift gears from midterm mischief to evening entertainment.
From Slate ● Sep. 24, 2026
During Weinstein’s trial last year, prosecutor Nicole Blumberg told the jury that, in contrast to the producer’s frail appearance in court, he once exercised enormous control over the entertainment industry.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 23, 2026
He currently hosts a digital show, “Hot Mics with Billy Bush,” that covers sports, politics, entertainment, tech and pop culture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026
Watching paleontologists pulling things out of the ground—mostly worms—isn’t A-list entertainment.
From "Linked" by Gordon Korman
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
From January 12-21, 2024, visitors can enjoy weekend fireworks, ice-carved sculptures, a bar made of ice, a snow slide and other cold-weather entertainments in Lake Chelan and Manson.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 8, 2023
Bilbo Baggins called it a party, but it was really a variety of entertainments rolled into one.
From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien
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.
