unprofitable

Etymology

It is formed from English un- + profitable,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} first as Middle English unprofitable, also spelled unprofitabel and unprophitable.^[7] The base profitable is partly from Old French profitable (“advantageous, useful”), recorded in Old French about 1120, and partly from Medieval Latin profitabilis, the French adjective being formed from profiter (“to profit”) and the suffix -able.^[2] The noun profit goes back to Latin prōfectus (“progress, success”), from prōficiō (“to make progress”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Evil, wicked, harmful: about 1350, in a Middle English Psalter, a sense obsolete by 1656.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to the early 14th century, for useless, worthless, unworthy or producing no gain,^[3] and Dictionary.com to 1275–1325.^[6]

Semantic evolution

Middle English used the word for useless or of no value, for incompetent or incapable, for harmful (of food, unwholesome), and for unworthy or wicked.^[7] Trevisa wrote before 1398 that not all thorns are unprofitable, and Chaucer's Boece uses it to render Latin inutiles.^[7] With the it was used as a noun for unprofitable people or things from the Wycliffite Bible of before 1382,^[2] and as an adverb from about 1450 to 1600.^[2] Etymonline notes that Middle English also had a noun unprofit, loss or disadvantage.^[3] The financial sense, "yielding no profit", is recorded from 1579, in Twyne's translation of Petrarch;^[2][8] Johnson (1755) still gave only "useless, serving no purpose", quoting Hooker, the Book of Job and Philemon's "in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable".^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1350 – evil, wicked; harmful (obsolete after 1656).^[2]
• before 1382 – noun, with the, unprofitable people or things.^[2]
• before 1398 – useless, serving no purpose.^[2][7]
• c. 1450 – adverb, unprofitably (obsolete after 1600).^[2]
• 1579 – not yielding profit or financial gain.^[2][8]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Not making a profit; unremunerative: an unprofitable branch line.^{[10][11][4][2]}
2. Bringing no benefit or result; useless, futile: an unprofitable quarrel.^{[10][11][4][2]}
3. (obsolete, 1350–1656) Wicked, evil; harmful.^[2][7]

Word family

• unprofitability
• unprofitably
• unprofitableness

Related words

• profit
• profitable
• proficient

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
8. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt