lucrative
adjective
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Paying, gainful, remunerative, and lucrative share the meaning of bringing in a return of money, but each term casts a different light on how much green you take in. Paying is the word for jobs that yield the smallest potatoes—your first paying job probably provided satisfactory compensation, but you weren't 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 the one you want—those are the kind that go beyond your initial hopes or expectations.
Synonyms
Examples of lucrative in a Sentence
Rachel Donadio, New York Times Book Review, 5 Feb. 2006
Clubs take care of their star and other best players first, paying them lucrative salaries. By the time they get to the bottom half of the roster, they would not have enough money left to pay veterans worthwhile salaries …
—Murray Chass, New York Times, 16 Aug. 1994
Since the health care industry is lucrative and largely insulated from the usual disciplines of the marketplace, it has been able to absorb an ever-growing fraction of the gross domestic product.
—Marcia Angell, New England Journal of Medicine, 17 June 1993
The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race.
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859
The business has proved to be highly lucrative.
the new manager's mission was to turn the failing store into a lucrative operation
Kristin M. Hall, Fortune, 20 Apr. 2024
Oil and gas investments have become more lucrative.
—Justin Worland, TIME, 20 Apr. 2024
Injuries ravaged the roster, which included guard LaMelo Ball, who signed the most lucrative contract in Charlotte pro sports history before the season.
—Alex Zietlow, Charlotte Observer, 18 Apr. 2024
The 10 most lucrative farm crops, led by dairy products, brought in some $35 billion that year.
—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 18 Apr. 2024
Banking on the past Video games are one of the most lucrative forms of modern media, raking in billions of dollars every year.
—Alyssa Mercante, Quartz, 17 Apr. 2024
The Covid-19 pandemic proved extraordinarily lucrative for Mindray; in 2020, the net worth of company cofounder Li Xiting—Singapore’s richest man—was reported to be increasing by a mind-bending $1 billion per month due to high worldwide demand for ventilators.
—James McClain, Robb Report, 16 Apr. 2024
As a civilian, Perun built a lucrative business fabricating and installing doors with intercom systems, which are ubiquitous in Ukraine.
—Luke Mogelson, The New Yorker, 8 Apr. 2024
Those principles haven’t prevented Google signing lucrative military contracts with the Pentagon and Israel.
—Billy Perrigo, TIME, 8 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'lucrative.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Lucrative.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lucrative. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
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lucrative
adjective
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adjective
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