WORD OF THE DAY: LUCRATIVE
adjective | LOO-kruh-tiv
What It Means
Something described as lucrative produces money or wealth.
// The author parlayed the success of her books into a lucrative second career as a public speaker.
Examples of LUCRATIVE
“A vibrant commercial Off Broadway sector existed decades ago, but it shrank as the nonprofit theater movement grew, providing a home for adventurous art. It also contracted as Broadway surged, providing the temptation of bigger audiences and higher profits, and as some venues were lost for more lucrative real estate uses.” — Michael Paulson, The New York Times, 11 Apr. 2024
Did You Know?
Paying, gainful, remunerative, and lucrative are all used to describe ways to bring home the bacon, but each term suggests a different amount of bacon being brought in. Paying is the word for jobs that yield the smallest potatoes—a paying job should provide satisfactory compensation, but you’re not going to get rich by it. Gainful employment might offer a bit more cash, and gainful certainly suggests that an individual is motivated by a desire for gain. Remunerative implies that a job provides more than the usual rewards, but a lucrative position is really the one you want—that’s the kind that goes beyond your initial hopes or expectations to really bring in the lucre (both lucrative and lucre come from the Latin noun lucrum, meaning “gain” or “profit”).
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
