unprofitable
nounEtymology From un- + profitable.
1
A person or thing that fails to make a profit.
unprofitable
adjUS /ʌnˈpɹɑf.ɪ.təbl̩/ · UK /ʌnˈpɹɒf.ɪ.təbl̩/
Etymology From un- + profitable.
1
Not making a profit.
- Being a professional poet is a nice job, albeit unprofitable.
- 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.1840, John Rogers, Anti-popery: Or, Popery Unreasonable, Unscriptural, and Novel, page 191:
3 more examples
- 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, […]1847, Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey:
- 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 […]1887, R. A. Murray, Victoria. Geology and Physical Geography, page 126:
- In addition, over 350 little-used stations were closed, and reductions were made in unprofitable train services.1959 August 23, “Re-Appraisal of the Modernisation of British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 520:
- Derived terms
- unprofitableness, unprofitably