Entertainee as in someone who gets entertained by an "entertainer".
If not, is it OK to use it? Or is there a word that can be used instead?
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closed as general reference by MετάEd, Will Hunting, Urbycoz, Brendon, Carlo_R. Sep 20 '12 at 15:28
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No, I do not believe that particularly in this context the word entertainee could be used. As a matter of fact I don't think that such word exists at all. I believe the word audience sounds about right. You see, Entertainment is an action or activity, where the entertainer entertains, Note that the word "audience" may consists of one or more people. |
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Entertainee is a valid term and the meaning would be well understood by persons of erudition BUT it's use would usually indicate either affectation or humour. A person using this word would usually have some other major purpose than just indicating that somebody has been entertained. Google gives about 18,000 hits for "entertainee" - which is a small number in this context and indicates minimal but non zero usage. For comparison, "entertainer" gives about 10 million hits. |
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Here's what Dictionary.com says about this kind of synthesized noun: **"-ee: a suffix forming from transitive verbs nouns which denote a person who is the object or beneficiary of the act specified by the verb (addressee; employee; grantee); recent formations now also mark the performer of an act, with the base being an intransitive verb (escapee; returnee; standee) or, less frequently, a transitive verb (attendee) or another part of speech (absentee; refugee)." "Origin: {French -é, (masculine), -ée (feminine), past participle endings} {Latin -ātus, -āta -ate1}**" Word Origin & History "-ee "in legal English (and in imitation of it), represents the Anglo-Fr. -é ending of pps. used as nouns. As these sometimes were coupled with agent nouns in -or, the two suffixes came to be used as a pair to denote the initiator and the recipient of an action" I personally have no problem with the term entertainee -- there are so many other nouns formed by adding that /-ee/ to a verb -- but I agree with Russell McMahon that its use would probably be jocular, as would, say, I'm the driver and you're the drivee. 'Twould be understood but probably snickered at. Maybe calling the entertainee the entertained (one) (by analogy with Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One rather than The Lovee) would be a workable alternative. |
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