/ˌɛntərˈteɪn/
[verb] To keep someone amused and interested, often through a performance, activity, or conversation; also, to consider an idea or to welcome guests into your home.
Before it meant fun, 'entertain' literally meant to hold someone between your hands — to keep them in your grip.
The word 'entertain' reaches back to a beautifully physical image: the act of holding something between two hands. Its Latin ancestors are 'inter', meaning 'between' or 'among', and 'tenere', meaning 'to hold'. These two elements fused into the Latin verb 'intertenere', which carried the literal sense of keeping something suspended, held in place, or maintained. It was a word about grip — physical, social, and eventually emotional.
From Latin, the word passed into Old French as 'entretenir', where it took on a broader social meaning. In medieval French, to 'entretenir' someone meant to keep them in a certain condition — to maintain their good favour, to support them, or to keep them engaged in conversation. The word carried an almost diplomatic flavour: you 'entertained' a person the way you might tend a fire, making sure the warmth never died. Old French 'entretenir' then crossed into Middle English in the 15th century, appearing as 'entertaine' or 'entertayne', and English speakers quickly made it their own.
In its earliest English uses, 'entertain' had little to do with amusement. Writers used it to mean 'to maintain' or 'to keep in a particular state' — you might entertain a friendship, meaning you tended and preserved it. A king might entertain troops, meaning he kept them paid and in service. The idea of holding something steady — not letting it slip away — was at the heart of every use. Even the modern phrase 'to entertain an idea' echoes this ancient meaning: you hold the thought in your mind, you give it room, you keep it alive long enough to examine it.
The shift toward amusement and pleasure came gradually through the 16th and 17th centuries, as the social ritual of hosting guests became increasingly elaborate in European courts and English households. To 'entertain' a guest meant to occupy them, keep them from boredom, fill their time with pleasant things. Because hospitality naturally involved music, stories, food, and laughter, the word slowly absorbed all of these associations. By the time Shakespeare was writing, 'entertain' could describe both the act of receiving a visitor and the act of delighting an audience.
The theatrical and commercial sense — the entertainment industry, a professional entertainer — solidified in the 18th and 19th centuries, when public spectacle became a business. The word had travelled an extraordinary distance: from the Latin 'inter' and 'tenere', through Old French 'entretenir', into English 'entertain', and from a simple metaphor of holding something between the hands to a multi-billion-dollar global concept. The root 'tenere' is surprisingly productive in English, giving us 'contain' (Latin 'continere' → Old French 'contenir' → English 'contain'), 'retain' (Latin 'retinere' → Old French 'retenir' → English 'retain'), and 'sustain' (Latin 'sustinere' → Old French 'sustenir' → English 'sustain'). In every case, the core idea is the same: something held, kept, gripped — never allowed to fall away.