Profitable

How to spell profitable

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce profitable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does profitable mean?

1. adjectiveProducing a financial gain, or bringing a useful benefit or advantage.

Profitable in a sentence

• The new cafe became profitable within its first year of trading.

• She invested in a small but highly profitable rental property.

Where does profitable come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on 'profit', which English borrowed from Old French in the early 1300s. The French term traced back to the Latin profectus, the past participle of proficere, meaning 'to make progress' or 'to advance', formed from pro 'forward' and facere 'to make or do'. In its earliest English use, profit carried the broader idea of advantage or benefit before settling on the modern financial sense of money gained. The adjective profitable then attached the suffix -able, which English took from Latin -abilis, to mean 'capable of yielding a benefit'. The same facere root still surfaces in everyday words such as 'factory' and 'manufacture', and the single 't' in profit (not a doubled one) is the small spelling point worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• profit (from Latin profectus 'progress, advance')
• -able (suffix forming adjectives meaning 'capable of' or 'yielding')