Entertainer

How to spell entertainer

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce entertainer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does entertainer mean?

1. nounA person who performs for an audience, such as a singer, comedian, or musician, in order to amuse them.

Entertainer in a sentence

• The cruise ship hired a magician as the main entertainer for the week.

• As a children's party entertainer, she juggled and sang for an hour.

Where does entertainer come from?

Language of origin: French

This word goes back to the French verb entretenir, which literally meant 'to hold together' or 'to keep up'. That French verb was built from the Latin elements inter, meaning 'among' or 'between', and tenere, meaning 'to hold', so the original idea was of holding people together or maintaining something. English borrowed 'entertain' in the late 1400s, and at first it meant to keep up, support, or maintain (you could entertain a servant, or entertain a hope), a sense that survives when we say we 'entertain an idea'. By the 1500s it had drifted toward the friendly meaning of receiving guests and keeping them amused, and the agent noun 'entertainer' for a professional performer followed naturally. The same tenere root that gives the spelling its surprising 'tain' also sits inside 'maintain', 'retain', and 'contain', which is a handy reminder that the middle of the word is 'tain', not 'ten'.

How the word is built

• enter- (from Latin inter, among)
• tain (from tenere, to hold)
• -er (agent noun: one who does)