Profit

The English word "profit" entered the language in the mid-thirteenth century from Old French prufit, meaning gain or advantage. The French word came from Latin profectus, meaning growth, advance, increase, or success, the past participle of proficere, to make progress.1 The Latin root combined pro (forward) with facere (to make or do). To profit, in Latin, was to move forward.

The earliest English usage carried both financial and spiritual meanings. Around 1300, "profit" could mean benefit, spiritual advantage, or gain of any kind. The specific commercial meaning, the surplus remaining after all costs are deducted from revenue, did not solidify until around 1600.2

For medieval Christian thinkers, the pursuit of profit beyond what was needed for sustenance was morally suspect. Thomas Aquinas distinguished between exchange for the purpose of meeting needs, which was legitimate, and exchange for the purpose of gain, which required justification.3 The word moved between moral categories for centuries before settling into the neutral vocabulary of accounting.

Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) reframed profit as the natural reward for the risk of employing capital in production. Smith argued that the profit motive, far from being morally suspect, was the mechanism through which individual self-interest generated collective prosperity.4

The language retained traces of both histories. "Nonprofit" described organizations that existed for purposes other than generating surplus. "Profiteering" described surplus-seeking that violated moral or legal norms, usually during wartime or crisis. The word "profit" itself became neutral, but the words attached to it still carried moral weight.5

Webster's 1828 dictionary defined profit as "the advance in the price of goods sold beyond the cost of purchase" and also, separately, as "any advantage; any accession of good from labor or exertion." The dual meaning persists. A person can profit from experience, from relationships, from learning. The financial definition dominates contemporary usage, but the older, broader sense of moving forward has not entirely disappeared.6