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Unavailing; unprofitable; useless; without advantage or success. Chaucer. I'll follow him no more with bootless prayers. Shak. -- Boot"less*ly, adv. -- Boot"less*ness, n.

thought; -- usually followed by over or on; as, to brood over misfortunes. Brooding on unprofitable gold. Dryden. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit. Hawthorne. When with downcast eyes we muse and brood. Tennyson.

of; with aid of; through; through the act or agency of; as, a city is destroyed by fire; profit is made by commerce; to take by force.

Private end or interest; secret purpose; selfish advantage. [Written also bye-end.] "Profit or some other by-end." L'Estrange.

That which is caught or taken; profit; gain; especially, the whole quantity caught or taken at one time; as, a good catch of fish. Hector shall have a great catch if he knock out either of your brains. Shak.

A bargain; profit; gain. [Obs.] Piers Plowman.

Without diminution; in full; net; as, clear profit. I often wished that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a-year. Swift .

Clear or net profit. Trollope.

Convenience; accommodation; profit; benefit; advantage; interest; commodiousness. [Obs.] Drawn by the commodity of a footpath. B. Jonson. Men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury to others, it was not to be suffered. Hooker.

The right of taking a profit in the land of another, in common either with the owner or with other persons; -- so called from the community of interest which arises between the claimant of the right and the owner of the soil, or between the claimants and other commoners entitled to the same right. Common appendant, a r…

blished by a coöperative society, where the members make their purchases and share in the profits or losses.

cipline; chastisement. Correction and instruction must both work Ere this rude beast will profit. Shak.

n equivalent to or for; to counterbalance; to compensate. Upon balancing the account, the profit at last will hardly countervail the inconveniences that go allong with it. L'Estrange.

Unproductive; bringing no gain; unprofitable; as, dead capital; dead stock in trade.

thing from a source; the act of procuring an effect from a cause, means, or condition, as profits from capital, conclusions or opinions from evidence. As touching traditional communication, . . . I do not doubt but many of those truths have had the help of that derivation. Sir M. Hale.

To give direction; to point out a course; to act as guide. Wisdom is profitable to direct. Eccl. x. 10.

Loss; detriment; hindrance; prejudice to interest, fame, credit, profit, or other good. They would throw a construction on his conduct, to his disadvantage before the public. Bancroft.

robity; knavish; fraudulent; unjust. To get dishonest gain. Ezek. xxii. 27. The dishonest profits of men in office. Bancroft.

Indifference to profit; want of regard to private advantage; disinterestedness. [Obs.] Johnson.

To make partition of among a number; to apportion, as profits of stock among proprietors; to give in shares; to distribute; to mete out; to share. True justice unto people to divide. Spenser. Ye shall divide the land by lot. Num. xxxiii. 54.