lucrative

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   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. 2
   adj

   Of a target: worth attacking; whose destruction is militarily useful.

   Command and Control centers and headquarters are strategically important and lucrative targets.

3. 3
   adj

   producing a sizeable profit

Etymology

Borrowed from French lucratif, from Latin lucrativus (“profitable”), from lucratus, past participle of lucror (“to gain”), from lucrum (“gain”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leh₂w- (“profit, gain”). Compare Spanish lucrar. By surface analysis, lucre + -ative.