Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One who makes excessive profits on goods in short supply.
- intransitive verb To make excessive profits on goods in short supply.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun pejorative One who makes an unreasonable profit not justified by cost or risk.
- verb To make an unreasonable profit not justified by cost or risk.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun someone who makes excessive profit (especially on goods in short supply)
- verb make an unreasonable profit, as on the sale of difficult to obtain goods
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The idea being that the profiteer is the worst citizen under the sun.
Russia 1933
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How about the freedom to not have to worry that some greedy profiteer is going to plunder all of my retirement options?
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How about the freedom to not have to worry that some greedy profiteer is going to plunder all of my retirement options?
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Attempts to capitalize the need of the world for private gain, or in common parlance, to "profiteer," were comparatively rare and were adequately punished by revocation of license or by forced sale of hoardings.
Woodrow Wilson and the World War A Chronicle of Our Own Times. Charles Seymour 1924
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They reached the hands of many an opulent and abandoned 'profiteer' of Damascus,
Tales of Chinatown Sax Rohmer 1921
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Capital and Labor are at each other's throats; men cry "profiteer" at those whom good fortune and callous conscience have allowed to take advantage of the world crisis.
The Nervous Housewife Abraham Myerson 1914
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This does not mean that the mass of the employees upon daily papers understand what they are talking about when they use the word "profiteer," any more than they understand what they are talking about when they use the words
The Free Press Hilaire Belloc 1911
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They commonly debase the word "profiteer" to mean some one who gets an exceptional profit, just as they use my own
The Free Press Hilaire Belloc 1911
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The ugly word "profiteer" had not yet been coined.
My Discovery of England Stephen Leacock 1906
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Then, as always, what we now call the "profiteer" was holding up supplies for higher prices.
Washington and His Comrades in Arms; a chronicle of the War of Independence George McKinnon Wrong 1904
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