Oh, you were thinking of something like
(setq entl (entget (car (nentselp (cadr ent)))))
or even shorter? Nah, that's not a good idea, considering ENTSEL accepts the "Last" keyword and ENTGET will then have a fit.
Actually there is a hidden trap in that situation because ENTSEL will return '(0.0 0.0 0.0) if "Last" was issued, making NENTSELP search in that location and, in worst case, return a wrong entity!!
Anyway, there is no reason why ient shouldn't be replaced by ent - leaving out a single local var - but you have to verify the ename before trying to ENTGET it because it can fail (or you can catch errors with VL-CATCH.... but then it gets even longer)
Analyze away. It's only good to get some discussions instead of just tossing finished code around.