unprofitable

comparative more unprofitable · superlative most unprofitable

1. Not making a profit.

   Being a professional poet is a nice job, albeit unprofitable.

   4 more examples

   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.

   1840, John Rogers, Anti-popery: Or, Popery Unreasonable, Unscriptural, and Novel, page 191

   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, […]

   1847, Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey

   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 […]

   1887, R. A. Murray, Victoria. Geology and Physical Geography, page 126

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

   1959 August 28, “Re-Appraisal of the Modernisation of British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 520

   Synonyms: improfitable · Antonyms: profitable

plural unprofitables

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