gainfully

comparative more gainfully · superlative most gainfully

1. In a gainful manner; profitably.

   Although the list is designed for girls and women, nine tenths of its titles and fully half its hints for clubs would serve boys and men very gainfully.

   1896, Popular Science Monthly

   3 more examples

   During the early colonial period we find practically no women gainfully employed except in domestic service. There were three classes of domestic servants.

   1916, Meta Stern Lilienthal, From Fireside to Factory

   The room, too, for such a haunt of gravity, is a cheerful room, with its large window overlooking the Strand, and one may spend a postprandial hour there very agreeably, and eke very gainfully if one takes an idler's interest in other people's problems.

   1919, Bernard Capes, The Skeleton Key

   […]a land in which mule trains coincided with railway trains, and where witches and explorers were still gainfully employed when Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris.

   2007, Graham Robb, “Itinerary”, in The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, W.W. Norton and Company, →ISBN, page 16