amusing

1. 1
   adjective

   Funny or comical enough to make people laugh.

   The host's amusing remarks had the whole table chuckling between courses.

   His attempt to fix the printer turned into an amusing disaster everyone still jokes about.

   Similarfunny, humorous, comical, witty

   Oppositeserious, unfunny

2. 2
   adjective

   Enjoyable and engaging, holding a person's attention in a pleasant way.

   The lecture was surprisingly amusing, full of anecdotes that held everyone's attention.

   She passed the long flight with an amusing novel she could not put down.

   Similarentertaining, enjoyable, engaging, diverting, delightful

   Oppositeboring, dull, tedious

   Note

   Diversion rather than laughter is the point here: a film can have amusing moments and still never make you laugh out loud, which is where the "funny" meaning takes over. Margery Allingham's "an amusing new fashion" has the same lightness, pleasant and novel rather than comic. More amusing is the usual comparative, though Thackeray wrote "We don't get amusinger" in his 1856 letter "To Mrs. Elliot".

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of amuse.

   The babysitter spent the whole evening amusing the toddlers with hand puppets.

   Amusing a restless crowd is harder than most performers admit.

   Note

   The verb form always has someone or something on the receiving end: amusing the toddlers, amusing a restless crowd. That object is the quickest way to tell it from the adjective "entertaining", which takes very or more instead. In older prose the participle can also carry amuse's archaic senses, to beguile or delude, or to absorb someone in thought. There it means keeping a person occupied or deceived, not entertained.

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