Entertained

How to spell entertained

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce entertained

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does entertained mean?

1. verbProvided someone with amusement, enjoyment, or hospitality.
2. verbGave serious thought to a possibility, suggestion, or feeling.

Entertained in a sentence

• The magician entertained the children for nearly an hour.

• The board briefly entertained the idea of relocating the office.

• They entertained a dozen colleagues at dinner last weekend.

• She never seriously entertained the thought of quitting her job.

Where does entertained come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb tenere, meaning 'to hold', combined with inter, meaning 'among' or 'between', so the underlying idea was literally 'to hold among' or 'to keep up'. English took it through the Old French entretenir, which carried the sense of holding people together and keeping them in good company. When it arrived in English in the fifteenth century it first meant to maintain or to keep up something, and only later softened into the modern meaning of amusing or hosting guests. The same tenere root sits inside a whole family of English words such as 'maintain', 'retain', and 'contain', and recognising that hidden -tain element is a useful guard against the common slip of writing the middle as -tane or -tian. The -ed ending is simply the regular past tense added once the verb settled into English.

How the word is built

• enter- (from Latin inter, among)
• -tain (from tenere: to hold)
• -ed (past tense suffix)