What is Entertaiment?

The clown at a birthday party, the Broadway show, the stadium rock concert, your friends fighting over the last potato chip—these and many other things are entertainment. Entertaiment is understood objectively, communicates from an external stimulus to an audience, offers pleasure and requires the audience to be passive. It is also a form of consumption that can be experienced multiple times, has the ability to cross media and have an unlimited potential for remix.

The word derives from the Latin inter tenere, or hold inside. It is associated with hospitality and the idea of keeping guests happy. It later came to refer to amusement.