Lucrative
adj ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Producing a surplus; profitable.
"Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles."
- 2 Of a target: worth attacking; whose destruction is militarily useful.
"Command and Control centers and headquarters are strategically important and lucrative targets."
- 1 producing a sizeable profit wordnet
Example
More examples"Several more companies are moving to enter the lucrative pet food market of the country."
Etymology
Borrowed from French lucratif, from Latin lucrativus (“profitable”), from lucratus, past participle of lucror (“I gain”), from lucrum (“gain”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leh₂w- (“profit, gain”). Compare Spanish lucrar. By surface analysis, lucre + -ative.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.