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ging profit or gain; gainful; lucrative; useful; helpful; advantageous; beneficial; as, a profitable trade; profitable business; a profitable study or profession. What was so profitable to the empire became fatal to the emperor. Arbuthnot. -- Prof"it*a*ble*ness, n. -- Prof"it*a*bly, adv.

Unprofitable. [Obs.]

Unprofitable. [Obs.]

Being of advantage; conferring advantage; gainful; profitable; useful; beneficial; as, an advantageous position; trade is advantageous to a nation. Advabtageous comparison with any other country. Prescott. You see . . . of what use a good reputation is, and how swift and advantageous a harbinger it is, wherever one goe…

Profitableness.

y avail one's self of; capable of being used for the accomplishment of a purpose; usable; profitable; advantageous; convertible into a resource; as, an available measure; an available candidate. Struggling to redeem, as he did, the available months and days out of so many that were unavailable. Carlyle. Having no avail…

Unproductive; fruitless; unprofitable; empty. Brilliant but barren reveries. Prescott. Some schemes will appear barren of hints and matter. Swift.

Supplying need; profitable; advantageous. [Obs.] Udall.

Advantageous; useful; profitable. [Archaic] -- Be*hoove"ful*ly, adv. -- Be*hoove"ful*ness, n. [Archaic]

The quality of being beneficial; profitableness.

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.

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

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

on the labors of others; a lazy, idle fellow; a sluggard. By living as a drone,to be an unprofitable and unworthy member of so noble and learned a society. Burton.

The act of flowing or proceeding from a fountain head or origin. South. Those profitable and excellent emanations from God. Jer. Taylor.

Pertaining to an emolument; profitable. [R.] Evelyn.

Without profitable end; fruitless; unsatisfying. [R.] "All loves are endless." Beau. & Fl.

have, possess, and use with satisfaction; to occupy or have the benefit of, as a good or profitable thing, or as something desirable; as, to enjoy a free constitution and religious liberty. That the children of Israel may enjoy every man the inheritance of his fathers. Num. xxxvi. 8. To enjoy the pleasures of sin for…

worth a great price. [R.] A pound of man's flesh, taken from a man, Is not so estimable, profitable neither, As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. Shak.