Entertainment

How to spell entertainment

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce entertainment

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does entertainment mean?

1. nounActivity, performance, or material that provides amusement or enjoyment.

Entertainment in a sentence

• The cruise offered live music and other entertainment every evening.

• Streaming services have transformed how families consume entertainment at home.

Where does entertainment come from?

Language of origin: French

The word travels back through Old French entretenir, which meant literally 'to hold together' or 'to keep up', built from the Latin inter 'among, between' and tenere 'to hold'. When English adopted 'entertain' in the 1400s, it carried that older sense of maintaining something or keeping company, and only later narrowed toward the idea of amusing or diverting guests. The suffix -ment, also from Latin by way of French, turned the verb into an abstract noun naming the activity itself. That same tenere root quietly anchors a whole family of English words, including 'maintain', 'retain', and 'contain', all of which involve some kind of holding. Knowing the buried -tain (hold) helps explain why the middle of the word is spelled with that distinct chunk rather than a vague 'ten'.

How the word is built

• enter- (from Latin inter: among)
• -tain (from tenere: to hold)
• -ment (noun-forming suffix)