Word.ws English Dictionary

entertaine

entertaine is the obsolete spelling of entertain.

Meaning of entertain

Noun

entertain (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) Entertainment; pleasure.
    • And Celſo, prethee let it be thy care to night / To haue ſome pretty ſhew, to ſolemnize / Our high inſtalement, ſome muſike maſkerie: / Weele giue faire entertaine vnto Maria […]c. 1603 (date written), Iohn Marston, The Malcontent, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for William Aspley, […], published 1604, →OCLC, Act V, scene iii
  2. (obsolete) Reception of a guest; welcome.
    • But neede, that answers not to all requests, / Bad them not looke for better entertayne […]1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

See all 9 meanings of entertain

Questions about entertaine

What is entertaine the obsolete spelling of?
Entertaine is the obsolete spelling of entertain.

Words near entertaine in the dictionary

  1. entertailing
  2. entertain
  3. entertain'd
  4. entertainability
  5. entertainable
  6. entertaine
  7. entertained
  8. entertainee
  9. entertainees
  10. entertainer
  11. entertainers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: entertaine (page history and authors); entertain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “entertaine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/entertaine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.