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Hearers will accept what speakers say, and so speakers will reasonably expect hearers to accept, consider, or entertain what they say about objects or states of affairs not within the immediate perceptual vicinity of the interlocutors.

— The Reliability of Testimony, Peter J. Graham,
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research via JStor

What is the meaning of entertain in the above sentence. The only meanings of the word that I could find (Dictionary.com) and are relevant here are to receive and to consider. But those meanings are already there via words accept and consider. Is there any other sense that can be relevant here, and cannot be taken to be already given via words accept and consider?

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    "consider" is good. To "entertain" means to listen, understand, think about, but not necessarily accept or reject.
    – Greg Lee
    Commented Aug 10, 2019 at 17:36
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    On the one hand, the series "accept, consider, or entertain" can be understood as indicating a progressively weakening range of responses to a thesis—from acceptance of the thesis to weighing the merits of the thesis to merely receiving the thesis for possible consideration. On the other hand, the author may simply have engaged in overwriting—offering "entertain" as an alternative to "consider" in a situation where it really provides no greater insight or value than the writer would have achieved without including the third term. Such things do happen, even in academic papers.
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented Aug 10, 2019 at 17:44
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    Please show evidence of research (this means showing what various online dictionaries say). I think that CED lists a (sub-) sense other than 'give full acceptance to' and 'at least consider as possibly true/profitable'. // The trouble with polysemy-with-hypernymy is that things get unwieldy and confusing when such words are used together. With the subsenses 'entertain' is allowed, this could logically (but not acceptably) be rendered 'speakers will reasonably expect hearers to entertain(a), entertain(b) or entertain(c) what they say'.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Aug 10, 2019 at 18:08

3 Answers 3

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Here, entertain means

to keep, hold, or maintain in the mind

  • I entertain grave doubts about her sincerity.

to receive and take into consideration

  • refused to entertain our plea (M-W)

Entertain may be considered redundant in your sentence, but it may be the author's stylistic choice to emphasise a fact by expressing it in different words that overlap in meaning. Note that accept, consider and entertain are connected by or, which can mean in other words.

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The word entertain when used that manner is often shaded with the sense of being willing to consider or "open" to something.

Merriam-Webster defines it as "to receive and take into consideration" [my emphasis]

and Cambridge defines it as "to hold in your mind or to be willing to consider or accept:" [my emphasis]

So the author is setting up a continuum, with acceptance at one end and open to considering at the other:

accepting ... considering ... willing to consider

They refuse even to entertain the notion that their leader is a con-man.

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    Not sure why the downvote, since there was no explanation offered.
    – TimR
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 18:45
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To entertain in this sentence means to accept something without knowing the truth and think about it and its consequences.. a good example would be...""A good phillosopher would entertain the imaginary situations "

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  • The OP already knows, in general terms, what entertain means. The question is specifically whether its meaning differs from that of consider.
    – jsw29
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 18:33

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