unprofitable
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From un- + profitable.
Pronunciation
[edit]- (General American) IPA(key): /ʌnˈpɹɑf.ɪ.təbl̩/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ʌnˈpɹɒf.ɪ.təbl̩/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Adjective
[edit]unprofitable (comparative more unprofitable, superlative most unprofitable)
- 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
[edit]not making a profit
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