entertainment
Americannoun
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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.
"The full launch including pre-orders will be the biggest entertainment launch ever... bigger than any movie, TV series, music concert or album," said Piers Harding-Rolls of the UK-based data firm Ampere Analysis.
From Barron's • Jun. 24, 2026
She covers books, food, entertainment and offbeat Los Angeles.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 24, 2026
Employment in white-collar “information jobs” — media, entertainment and high tech — have declined by 13% since the end of 2022.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 24, 2026
Pay roughly tripled for Andrew Schleimer, CFO of premium sports and entertainment company TKO Group, driven by stock awards valued at more than $14 million, nearly 10-times larger than the year before.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 23, 2026
It was common for people just to walk along 125th Street as their evening’s entertainment.
From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers
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.
