profiteering

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the practice of exploiting scarcity, crisis, or another person's need in order to make an excessive or unfair profit

   The emergency price controls were introduced to prevent profiteering on food and medicine.

From profiteer and -ing. Profiteer was formed from profit plus the agent suffix -eer; its sense of making excessive gains at others' expense was revived in the early twentieth century and became especially common during the First World War.

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