unprofitable

From un- + profitable.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ʌnˈpɹɑf.ɪ.təbl̩/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ʌnˈpɹɒf.ɪ.təbl̩/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

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 […]

   • 1959 August, “Re-Appraisal of the Modernisation of British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 520:

     In addition, over 350 little-used stations were closed, and reductions were made in unprofitable train services.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:unprofitable.

unprofitable (plural unprofitables)

1. A person or thing that fails to make a profit.