[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That entertains.
† 1. Affording sustenance, supporting life. rare.
1691–8. Norris, Pract. Disc., 202. The Air Temperate and Healthy, the Earth Fruitful and Entertaining.
2. Agreeable; interesting; now chiefly amusing.
1697. Collier, Ess. Mor. Subj., I. 11. For the presence of any desirable pbject, we know is more acceptable and entertaining than either the notion or prospect of it.
1713. Berkeley, Hylas & Phil., III. Wks. 1871, I. 339. A part of knowledge both useful and entertaining.
1729. Butler, Serm., Wks. 1874, II. 44. The secondary use of speech is to please and be entertaining to each other in conversation.
1796. C. Marshall, Garden., i. (1813), 6. Of all the employments in life, none is more natural, and entertaining, than the cultivation of plants.
1860. E. B. Ramsay, Remin., Ser. I. (ed. 7), 105. Enterteening has in olden Scottish usage the sense not of amusing but of interesting.
† 3. That exercises hospitality; hospitable. rare.
1659. Pearson, Creed, 711. This is the heavenly fellowship represented unto entertaining Abraham.
Hence Entertainingly adv., in an entertaining manner; † in the manner of one who receives guests (obs.); in an interesting or amusing way. Entertainingness, the quality of being entertaining.
1621. Lady M. Wroth, Urania, 455. He bark’t not … but look’d soberly, & entertainingly, like a steward, on the strangers.
1754. Sherlock, Disc. (1759), III. iv. 89 (R.). He that can talk entertainingly upon common Subjects.
1809–10. Coleridge, Friend (1865), 3. The entertainingness of moral writings.
1882. Dr. J. Brown, John Leech, etc. 320. ‘The Battle of Biggar,’ in which the question is ably and entertainingly handled.
1884. E. E. Hale, Christm. in Narragansett, v. 117. No method known by which you can inspissate entertainingness into a dull article.
