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:
Sales of the British news and entertainment magazine are down on average 20% year on year in weeks where heatwaves have been declared, Catherine Parsons said.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2026
The boat offers meals and children's games and entertainment.
From Barron's ● Aug. 13, 2026
In the book, most homes have parlor walls with huge video screens that broadcast streams of babbling commentary for both entertainment and manipulation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
“I think there are a lot of similarities between politics and entertainment, even more so with the advent of television,” Jones told The Times in 1993, shortly after leaving office.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2026
“Pipo Place will offer entertainment, not just concerts,” Wilfrido blurted out.
From "The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora" by Pablo Cartaya
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
The acting is fine, the characters generally endearing, and anyone familiar with local theater—or even just entertainments about local theater—will know the types.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 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
Did it have anything to do with the fact that the children were banished from these genteel afternoon entertainments?
From "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly
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.
