Whether it’s a clown at a birthday party, a Broadway show, or your friends fighting over the last potato chip, entertainment is something that affords pleasure, diversion, or amusement. But the word entertainment itself is a bit of an enigma: The prefix inter, meaning “inside,” and the suffix tenere, meaning to hold inside, suggest that this was originally a hospitable term for entertaining guests.
It has since evolved to refer to any activity that occupies or diverts the mind, from a prank at a high school to solving the daily crossword puzzle to a big-budget movie. And it encompasses all forms of art, from visual to audio to a dinner guest’s gossip. The SU2C model is an example of how entertainment can help fuel the scientific breakthroughs that will cure cancer.
