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entertainment

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

13 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "entertainment", 13-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "entertainment" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "entertainment" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

entertainment is aEnglishnoun. It means: An activity designed to give pleasure, enjoyment, diversion, amusement, or relaxation to an audience, no matter whether the audience participates passively as in watching opera or a movie, or activ... Pronounced /ˌɛn.təˈteɪn.mənt/. It ranks #2,482 in English word frequency.

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Key facts for entertainment
PropertyValue
Headwordentertainment
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
IPA/ˌɛn.təˈteɪn.mənt/
Letters13
Frequency rank#2,482
Misspellings tracked20
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of entertainment in English word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for entertainment is 13 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌɛn.təˈteɪn.mənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,482 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 20 documented wrong-spelling variants for entertainment, with forms such as "enetrtainment", "enntertainment", and "enteratinment". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English entretenement (“support, maintenance”), from Old French entretenement; see entertain. Morphologically entertain + -ment. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is entertainment, spelled E-N-T-E-R-T-A-I-N-M-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    An activity designed to give pleasure, enjoyment, diversion, amusement, or relaxation to an audience, no matter whether the audience participates passively as in watching opera or a movie, or actively as in games.
  2. 2
    A show put on for the enjoyment or amusement of others.
  3. 3
    Maintenance or support.
  4. 4
    An admission into service; a service.
  5. 5
    The payment of soldiers or servants; wages.
  6. 6
    A reception; a (provision of) food to guests or travellers.

Etymology

From Middle English entretenement (“support, maintenance”), from Old French entretenement; see entertain. Morphologically entertain + -ment.

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: enetrtainment,enntertainment,enteratinment,enterrtainment,entertaimnent,entertainemnt,entertainmennt,entertainmentt,entertainmetn,entertainmment,entertainmnet,entertainnment,entertaniment,entertianment,enterttainment,entetrainment,entretainment,enttertainment,etnertainment,netertainment

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for entertainment

Misspelling Variants of "entertainment"

enetrtainment13enntertainment14enteratinment13enterrtainment14entertaimnent13entertainemnt13entertainmennt14entertainmentt14
Misspelling Variants of "entertainment"

Frequency rank: #2,482 in English

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "entertainment"?
"entertainment" is spelled E-N-T-E-R-T-A-I-N-M-E-N-T. The IPA pronunciation is /ˌɛn.təˈteɪn.mənt/.
What does "entertainment" mean?
As a noun, "entertainment" means: An activity designed to give pleasure, enjoyment, diversion, amusement, or relaxation to an audience, no matter whether the audience participates passively as in watching opera or a movie, or activ...
What are common misspellings of "entertainment"?
Common misspellings include "enetrtainment", "enntertainment", "enteratinment", "enterrtainment", "entertaimnent". The correct spelling is "entertainment".
How do you pronounce "entertainment"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "entertainment" is /ˌɛn.təˈteɪn.mənt/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What is the origin of the word "entertainment"?
From Middle English entretenement (“support, maintenance”), from Old French entretenement; see entertain. Morphologically entertain + -ment. See the full etymology section above for more details.
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Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter E in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.