profiteering

noun

prof·i·teer·ing | \ ˌprä-fə-ˈtir-iŋ

Definition of profiteering

: the act or activity of making an unreasonable profit on the sale of essential goods especially during times of emergency … investigations unearthed information about industrial profiteering during the First World War …— Thomas E. Ricks The real estate culture in Florida had pushed profiteering to new levels, in large part because of its condominium economy.— Paul Reyes

Examples of profiteering in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951 of cervical cancer, reflects the profiteering of Black bodies in the name of the advancement of science. — Dezimey Kum, Time, "Fueled by a History of Mistreatment, Black Americans Distrust the New COVID-19 Vaccines," 28 Dec. 2020 Trump threw down the welcome mat to anyone looking to aid his presidential profiteering. — Casey Michel, The New Republic, "How to Make Kleptocrats Fear America Again," 23 Dec. 2020 Santas pointed fingers at Santas, slinging allegations of profiteering and conduct not befitting of Kriss Kringle. — Washington Post, "The Santa who sounded the alarm," 19 Dec. 2020 There, the profiteering and panic buying of a global health crisis is on chilling display. — Kartikay Mehrotra, Bloomberg.com, "Dark Web Has Become a Marketplace for ‘Vaccines’ and Other Pandemic Scams," 11 Nov. 2020 But behind the outrage over pharmaceutical profiteering and the technical rule-making lies a pressing question: What, exactly, is the price of a drug? — Robin Feldman, STAT, "Make list price the touchstone for drug pricing across the supply chain," 23 Nov. 2020 When he was captured by the partisans, his years of corruption, profiteering and brutality were treated with remarkable leniency. — Caroline Moorehead, WSJ, "‘The Perfect Fascist’ Review: Mussolini’s Man," 2 Oct. 2020 Mexican cargo ships hired by the immigration service in the 1950s to transport tens of thousands of deportees from south Texas to Veracruz in southern Mexico, an early episode of private profiteering in immigration. — Julia Preston, The New York Review of Books, "Deportation Nation," 22 Sep. 2020 But despite A-Rod’s best attempts to sway MLB owners to pick him, this is a group that let Jim Crane buy the Astros amid multiple allegations of war profiteering and discrimination. — Dennis Young, courant.com, "Greenwich billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen agrees to buy Mets," 14 Sep. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'profiteering.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.