unprofitable

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English

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Etymology

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From un- +‎ profitable.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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unprofitable (comparative more unprofitable, superlative most unprofitable)

  1. Not making a profit
    Synonym: improfitable
    Antonym: profitable
    Being a professional poet is a nice job, albeit unprofitable.
    • 1840, John Rogers, Anti-popery: Or, Popery Unreasonable, Unscriptural, and Novel, page 191:
      The undermediators are not required, have nothing properly to do, no peculiar duty to perform; but are an unprofitable or inutile set of beings sitting down and looking at each other through want of other occupation.
    • 1847, Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey:
      Soon after breakfast Miss Matilda, having galloped and blundered through a few unprofitable lessons, and vengeably thumped the piano for an hour, in a terrible humour with both me and it, because her mama would not give her a holiday, []
    • 1887, R. A. Murray, Victoria. Geology and Physical Geography, page 126:
      In some places, however, quartz reefs, payably auriferous while in Silurian rock, have been followed down to subjacent granite, and have there been found to thin out and become unprofitable []
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:unprofitable.

Translations

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