profitable

English

Etymology

Old French profitable.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

profitable (comparative more profitable, superlative most profitable)

1. Producing a profit.
   • Aeschylus

     It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.

   • 2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27:

     The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about "creating compelling content", or offering services that let you "stay up to date with what your friends are doing" […] and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.

Synonyms

• lucrative

Antonyms

• unprofitable

Derived terms

Terms derived from profitable

• disprofitable
• hyperprofitable
• improfitable

• nonprofitable
• profitableness
• profitably

• superprofitable
• unprofitable

Translations

producing profit

• Belarusian: please add this translation if you can
• Catalan: profitós (ca), rendible (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: (profitable, in terms of money) 可獲利的, 可获利的 (kě huòlì de), 有利可圖 (zh), 有利可图 (zh) (yǒulìkětú), (beneficial) 有益 (zh) (yǒuyì)

• Czech: ziskový m
• Dutch: winstgevend (nl)
• Esperanto: profitodona, profitebla
• Estonian: kasumlik
• Finnish: tuottava (fi), tuottoisa (fi), kannattava (fi)
• French: profitable (fr), fructueux (fr), lucratif (fr)
• Galician: rendible (gl)
• Georgian: მომგებიანი (momgebiani)
• German: gewinnbringend, profitabel (de), lukrativ (de)
• Greek:

  Ancient Greek: ὀνήσιμος (onḗsimos)

• Hungarian: nyereséges (hu)

• Irish: airgeadúil
• Italian: redditizio (it), fruttifero (it), remunerativo (it)
• Japanese: 有益な (ja) (ゆうえきな, yūeki-na), 利益になる (ja) (りえきになる, rieki-ni naru)
• Maori: whaihua
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: lønnsom (no)

  Nynorsk: lønsam, lønnsam

• Polish: dochodowy (pl)
• Portuguese: lucrativo (pt)
• Romanian: profitabil (ro), fructuos (ro), lucrativ (ro)
• Russian: вы́годный (ru) (výgodnyj), при́быльный (ru) (príbylʹnyj)
• Serbo-Croatian: isplativ (sh), unosan (sh)
• Spanish: lucrativo, ventajoso
• Swedish: lönsam (sv)

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French

Etymology

From profiter +‎ -able

Adjective

profitable (plural profitables)

1. profitable

Further reading

• “profitable” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

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Old French

Etymology

profiter +‎ -able.

Adjective

profitable m (oblique and nominative feminine singular profitable)

1. useful; usable; that one can make use of

Descendants

• English: profitable (borrowed)
• French: profitable

References

• profitable on the Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub