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:
Before the Kings reached out to you, what were your thoughts about AI in the entertainment industry?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 12, 2026
Nandy said earlier this week that she was summoning leaders from the broadcasting, publishing, film and entertainment industries to "draw a line" in the sand.
From BBC ● Nov. 12, 2026
Why does the NFL—the country’s premier entertainment platform—have such a deficit at its most critical position?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 12, 2026
“You live on 900 acres with every form of entertainment imaginable,” developer Andy Mitchell tells Realtor.com.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 11, 2026
I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of entertainment was proposed: they spoke of “playing charades,” but in my ignorance I did not understand the term.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
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
Upholding this legacy seems a more vital role for a critic than operating as a tour guide of commercial entertainments.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 4, 2024
They would sit together at meals and go in groups to attend community entertainments.
From "Son" by Lois Lowry
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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.
