Crossword Dictionary
PROFITLESS
profitless - a
without profit or reward; "let us have no part in profitless quarrels"- D.D.Eisenhower; "How weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world"- Shakespeare
Synoynms
abortive, futile, ineffective, ineffectual, pointless, unproductive, unsuccessful, useless, barren, empty, gainless
Examples
But the cisterns which you have dug for yourselves are broken and profitless to you.
What happened was that the Anglo-Norman invaders pushed gradually west, occupying the best of the land and holding it down by castles, but leaving the profitless bogs and mountains to the local princes.
But it is obvious to every one who nowadays indulges in the profitless pastime of studying their writings that, as a whole, they failed in grasping the essential difference between homology (or " affinity," as they generally termed it) and analogy.
Etymology
"void of profit, gain, or advantage," 1590s, from profit (n.) + -less.
profit (n.)
mid-13c., "income derived from an office, property, transaction, etc.;" c. 1300, "benefit, spiritual benefit, advantage;" from Old French prufit, porfit "profit, gain" (mid-12c.), from Latin profectus "growth, advance, increase, success, progress," noun use of past participle of proficere "accomplish, make progress; be useful, do good; have success, profit," from pro "forward" (from PIE root *per- (1) "forward") + combining form of facere "to make, do" (from PIE root *dhe- "to set, put").
-less
word-forming element meaning "lacking, cannot be, does not," from Old English -leas, from leas "free (from), devoid (of), false, feigned," from Proto-Germanic *lausaz (cognates: Dutch -loos, German -los "-less," Old Norse lauss "loose, free, vacant, dissolute," Middle Dutch los, German los "loose, free," Gothic laus "empty, vain"), from PIE root *leu- "to loosen, divide, cut apart." Related to loose and lease.