profiteer

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a person who makes excessive or unfair profit, especially from scarcity or an emergency

   The public accused wartime profiteers of raising prices on essential goods.

2. 2
   verb

   to make an excessive or unfair profit

   Some traders tried to profiteer from the sudden shortage.

Formed from profit + -eer in the late nineteenth century. The suffix gives the word a disparaging agent sense: someone who pursues profit opportunistically or unfairly.

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