Meaning of entertain in English

entertain

verb

/en.t̬ɚˈteɪn/ uk

/en.təˈteɪn/

entertain verb (AMUSE)

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B1 [ I or T ]

to keep a group of people interested or enjoying themselves:

We hired a magician to entertain the children.

Most children's television programs aim to educate and entertain at the same time.

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Milligan's anarchic humor has always had the power to offend as well as entertain.
Year after year they wheel out the same third-rate celebrities to entertain us.
Should the function of children's television be to entertain or to enlighten?
The crowd was entertained with a display of aerobatics.
The crowds were once again entertained by the number one tennis player's antics on and off the court.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Celebrating & entertaining

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Causing pleasure

entertain verb (INVITE)

[ I or T ]

to invite someone to your home and give food and drink to them:

We entertain a lot of people, mainly business associates of my wife's.

Now that I live on my own, I don't entertain much.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Celebrating & entertaining

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entertain verb (THINK ABOUT)

[ T not continuous ] formal

to hold something in your mind or to be willing to consider or accept something:

The General refused to entertain the possibility of defeat.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Thinking and contemplating

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(Definition of entertain from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

entertain | Intermediate English

entertain

verb

/ˌen·tərˈteɪn/

entertain verb (AMUSE)

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[ I/T ]

to keep a person or a group of people interested or amused:

[ I ] Children’s games and books seek to teach and entertain at the same time.

[ T ] Kerry and Bill entertained listeners of their radio show with tales of their adventures on an ocean cruise.

entertain verb (INVITE)

[ I/T ]

to invite one or more people to your house and give food and drink to them:

[ T ] She was a good cook and liked to entertain her friends with new dishes.

[ I ] We didn’t entertain much over the holidays this year.

entertain verb (THINK ABOUT)

[ T ]

to hold in your mind or to be willing to consider or accept:

He entertained some doubts about how truthful the government was.

(Definition of entertain from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

entertain | Business English

entertain

verb [ I or T ]

/ˌentəˈteɪn/ us

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to take customers or possible customers out to restaurants, bars, theatres, etc. as a way of encouraging them to do business with you:

Employees can use their expense accounts for entertaining a client.

(Definition of entertain from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of entertain

entertain

She only has a few canned responses to entertain her interlocutor.

From WIRED

This is almost intolerable to entertain, but it says something almost universally true.

From Slate Magazine

I hope that people are more than entertained by this film.

From Huffington Post

It's nice to be able to get up on a stage on your own and entertain people for an hour and a half, two hours.

From Billboard

Artists will live in the space to ponder work; exhibitions will be shown; meetings and lectures will be held; people will be entertained.

From OregonLive.com

That way, you can entertain yourself and others without leaving the kitchen.

From CNET

Because of the frivolous nature of this material, that it was something meant to entertain men, they didn't see it as having any value.

From Huffington Post

I wrote it to entertain its readers, nothing more.

From NPR

If you don't mind all the slobber, a dog like that can keep you entertained for a long time.

From The Star-Ledger - NJ.com

My childhood was wonderful; my relatives lived all around me, and since we had no television, we did so much together to entertain ourselves.

From Huffington Post

You all go over to each other's houses, you entertain each other, you have expense accounts.

From The Atlantic

What they're doing is very real -- trying to entertain the fans.

From CBS Local

As a sales representative for a major drug company, he was expected to entertain doctors two or three nights a week.

From NPR

It feels disrespectful; they are not there to entertain me.

From Huffington Post

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of entertain?