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ENTERTAINING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Agreeably diverting
Example:
films should be entertaining
Classified under:
Similar:
interesting (arousing or holding the attention)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb entertain
Context examples:
Our dinner was tête-à-tête, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Call it gossip, if you will, but when Nurse Rooke has half an hour's leisure to bestow on me, she is sure to have something to relate that is entertaining and profitable: something that makes one know one's species better.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
I saw the word, and am curious to know how it could be so very entertaining to the one, and so very distressing to the other.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
The holiday allowed to the Miss Bertrams the next day, on purpose to afford leisure for getting acquainted with, and entertaining their young cousin, produced little union.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
“Your conversation is most entertaining,” said he.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Meg was entertaining Sallie Gardiner in the parlor, when the door flew open and a floury, crocky, flushed, and disheveled figure appeared, demanding tartly...
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
My master gave public notice that he would show me again the next market-day; and in the meantime he prepared a convenient vehicle for me, which he had reason enough to do; for I was so tired with my first journey, and with entertaining company for eight hours together, that I could hardly stand upon my legs, or speak a word.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as Rule Britannia, or Away with Melancholy; when they wouldn't stand still to be learnt, but would go threading my grandmother's needle through my unfortunate head, in at one ear and out at the other!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I knew that we should either go to the bottom together, or that she would be the making of me; and I never had two days of foul weather all the time I was at sea in her; and after taking privateers enough to be very entertaining, I had the good luck in my passage home the next autumn, to fall in with the very French frigate I wanted.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
You don’t need to move to make changes, you could instead make repairs, de-clutter, paint a room or two, decorate with new furniture or a rug, or buy new dishes and other attractive accessories for entertaining.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
