profiting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of profit.

   Local businesses are profiting from the new highway nearby.

   She is profiting handsomely from her early investment.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. It builds the progressive (businesses are profiting), and it serves as a gerund, a verbal noun that keeps the verb's construction, as in profiting from another's loss. From names the source of the gain, and the same pattern can tip toward exploiting someone. Unlike the gerund, the true noun can take a plural, profitings.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of earning a financial gain from a transaction or enterprise.

   The profiting of a few executives during the layoffs angered staff.

   Critics condemned the profiting that came from inflated medicine prices.

   Similarprofiteering, enrichment, moneymaking

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A benefit or advantage gained from some action or situation.

   There is little profiting in arguing with someone who refuses to listen.

   She saw no profiting in delaying a decision everyone had already made.

   Similarpoint, benefit, use, advantage, gain

   Note

   Here the word names the gain itself rather than the act of making money, and the gain need not be financial at all. It mirrors profit in its broader sense of a benefit or positive result, a use that profit itself carries with dated and literary labels. To tell the two nouns apart, ask whether the sentence describes an activity someone does or an advantage someone gets.

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