A clown at a birthday party, a Broadway show, your friends fighting over the last potato chip-these are all examples of entertainment. The word comes from the Old French entretenir, meaning “hold together,” and was associated with hospitality. Today we use it to mean amusement or distraction. It’s why we talk about theatrical entertainment as shows, visual entertainment as stuff to look at and audio entertainment as music.
According to Oliver and Barstsch (2010), Entertainment is an activity that is understood objectively, includes communication between text and audience from external stimulus, offers pleasure, requires an audience and occurs in a passive form.