Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Profitable \Prof"it*a*ble\, a. [F. profitable.] Yielding or bringing profit or gain; gainful; lucrative; useful; helpful; advantageous; beneficial; as, a profitable trade; profitable business; a profitable study or profession.
What was so profitable to the empire became fatal to
the
emperor.
--Arbuthnot.
[1913 Webster] -- Prof"it*a*ble*ness, n. --
Prof"it*a*bly, adv.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, "yielding benefit, useful," from profit (v.) + -able or from Old French profitable, porfitable. Specific sense of "money-making" is attested from 1758. Related: Profitably.
Wiktionary
a. produce a profit.
WordNet
adj. yielding material gain or profit; "profitable speculation on the stock market" [ant: unprofitable]
promoting benefit or gain; "a profitable meeting to resolve difficulties"
providing profit; "a profitable conversation"
productive of profit; "a profitable enterprise"; "a fruitful meeting" [syn: fruitful]
Usage examples of "profitable".
I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that may be profitable.
He showed himself always assiduous with Madame de Maintenon, who, by her animated and unflagging talk, had the very profitable secret of keeping him amused.
As he slipped into his mid-eighties, Ludlow Baculum had spent many happy and profitable hours lurking in the back of a crowded car, his fingertips poised for a quick pinch or a shuddering grope.
This had, needless to say, cost EnGulfCo quite a bundle, but they figured that if Brewster needed this stuff, chances were that he was onto something that was liable to be very profitable in the not-too-distant future.
Finding mercenary employment combined with brigandage profitable, they spread, attracting into their ranks those who quickly relapse into lawlessness when the social contract breaks down.
But the instincts of our common humanity indignantly remonstrate against the testing of clumsy or unimportant hypotheses by prodigal experimentation, or MAKING THE TORTURE OF ANIMALS AN EXHIBITION TO ENLARGE A MEDICAL SCHOOL, or for the entertainment of students--not one in fifty of whom can turn it to any profitable account.
These cases are very different from that of the so-called Shroud of Turin, which shows something too close to a human form to be a misapprehended natural pattern and which is now suggested by carbon-14 dating to be not the death shroud of Jesus, but a pious hoax from the fourteenth century - a time when the manufacture of fraudulent religious relics was a thriving and profitable home handicraft industry.
As natural selection acts only by the accumulation of slight modifications of structure or instinct, each profitable to the individual under its conditions of life, it may reasonably be asked, how a long and graduated succession of modified architectural instincts, all tending towards the present perfect plan of construction, could have profited the progenitors of the hive-bee?
The explanation is manifest on the theory of the natural selection of successive slight modifications,--each modification being profitable in some way to the modified form, but often affecting by correlation of growth other parts of the organisation.
They say the price of moly ore rose enough about ten or fifteen years ago to make development profitable.
But all her dreams, and everything she holds dear, are threatened when the hospital decides that it would be more profitable to close the obstetrics unit and shift those resources to an expanded cardiac ward.
Six Shillings a bottle--A Settler near Parramatta having procured a small still from England, obtained a deleterious and mischievous spirit from his Wheat, which he found more profitable than carrying it to the public store, and selling it for ten Shillings per bushell.
Ned had found the visit to the main settlement at Parramatta both profitable and enjoyable.
Most importantly, he showed us how a participatory democracy can also be a profitable one, for voters and candidates alike.
Now he knew where the beds were he could make dry shell pearling a profitable sideline.