Showbusiness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The commercial world of entertainment, including films, music, television and live theatre, and the people who work within it
2. The business of producing and presenting entertainment for audiences across film, music, television and the stage
3. Public entertainment as an industry, encompassing the professionals, companies and money involved in films, recordings, broadcasts and performances

Etymology: "Showbusiness" is a plain compound of "show" and "business," with no hidden twist in its parts. "Show" comes from Old English "scēawian," meaning to look at or to cause to be seen, and "business" goes back to Old English "bisignes," meaning anxiety or occupation, which later came to mean a trade or line of work. Put together, the pair names the trade of putting on displays for an audience. The compound's meaning is the interesting part. "Show business" in the sense of the entertainment industry is the older and more general idea, and the single word "showbusiness" is simply the closed-up form of that phrase. Writing it as one word tends to signal a more informal or journalistic register than the two-word spelling.

Synonyms: showbiz, entertainment, show business