Entertaiment

The word entertainment has been so flexibly defined over the centuries that what may seem entertaining to one group of people might be considered work or even an act of cruelty to another. Moreover, familiar forms of entertainment have a tendency to cross over different media, and some images, structures, or genres of entertainment have been shown to have almost unlimited potential for creative remix. What seems to be entertaining in the moment may also provide insight or intellectual growth over time.

From Middle French entretenement, from intertenere, with the prefix inter meaning “inside” and the suffix tenere, from the Indo-European root ten, which means to stretch.