Entertaiment is the activity that holds or sustains attention and interest, or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities that have developed over thousands of years specifically for this purpose. The word comes from the Medieval Latin intertenere, which has the same roots as the Indo-European root ten, meaning to stretch or hold something.

Bates and Ferri (2010) define entertainment as an activity understood objectively, that involves communication between text and audience from external stimulus, offers pleasure to the audience and occurs in a passive form.