Entertaiment is a topic that requires a lot of work. It is also a subject that has been misunderstood and misinterpreted for years. This article will attempt to set the record straight about the term and what it really means.

Definition: TEN (Transformational Entertainment News) Fall 2011

The word entertain comes from the medieval Latin inter tenere, meaning to hold inside. This is derived from the prefix inter and the suffix ten, which has its roots in the Indo-European word ten, meaning to stretch or extend.

Entertainment is an activity understood objectively, consists of communication between the text and audience from an external stimulus, off ers pleasure to its audience and occurs in a passive form. Oliver and Barstsch (2010) argue that the six elements of entertainment are: objectivity, communication, external stimuli, pleasure, audience and passivity.