0 past simple and past participle of entertain
1 to keep a group of people interested or enjoying themselves:
Most children's television programmes aim to educate and entertain at the same time.
2 to invite someone to your home and give food and drink to them:
We entertain a lot of people, mainly business associates of my wife's.
Now that I live on my own, I don't entertain much.
3 to hold something in your mind or to be willing to consider or accept something:
The General refused to entertain the possibility of defeat.
Milligan's anarchic humour has always had the power to offend as well as entertain.
Year after year they wheel out the same third-rate celebrities to entertain us.
Should the function of children's television be to entertain or to enlighten?
The crowd was entertained with a display of aerobatics.
The crowds were once again entertained by the number one tennis player's antics on and off the court.
The emperor entertained them and raised the issue of the marble.
If a function for the dream experience is entertained, it is a biological or evolutionary one rather than a current concern or immediate psychological one.
This request, with its hint of trouble, is often enough to give the minister pause on any individual enthusiasm he may have entertained.
