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 company said Monday External link that it will separate its NBCUniversal media, entertainment and theme parks business from its cable and broadband operations in a spinoff due to occur in about a year.
From Barron's • Jun. 29, 2026
This would dismantle an earlier bet on combining entertainment and distribution.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 29, 2026
Comcast is spinning off its NBCUniversal entertainment and media assets into a separate publicly traded company, the media giant announced Monday.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 29, 2026
But she became a household name playing Margo in The Good Life from 1975, winning the Bafta TV award for best light entertainment performance in 1977.
From BBC • Jun. 29, 2026
“They normally do gigs for, like, Waffle Houses and stuff, but I guess the country western breakfast entertainment business isn’t booming, so we got them to do the festival. Cheap, too.”
From "Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus" by Dusti Bowling
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.
