Word Confusion: Profit versus Prophet

Revised as of
18 Dec 2022

Yep, another pair of heterographs, profit and prophet. Mammon and God. An etymological chat and a look at philosophy.

Matthew 6:24 claims that you cannot serve God and mammon both with mammon being all about profiting from your fellowman whereas God is about compassion. Now mistaking profit for prophet, well, that really sends the wrong impression.

For a prophet advocates a belief, sees the future, and/or teaches.

So, why would you want to sabotage your own story?

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

If you found this post on “Profit versus Prophet” interesting, consider subscribing to KD Did It, if you’d like to track this post for future updates.

Return to top

Profit	Prophet
Wall Street and Broadway is Fletcher6’s own work under the CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL license, via Wikimedia Commons. — Wall Street is the symbol of profit in America.	Brockhaus and Efron Jewish Encyclopedia is by an unknown artist and is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. — Moses is one of the Bible’s prophets.
Part of Grammar:
Noun; Verb, intransitive & transitive Plural for the noun: profits Gerund: profiting Third person present verb: profits Past tense or past participle: profited Present participle: profiting	Noun Plural: prophets FEMININE: prophetess, prophetesses
Noun: A financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something Advantage Benefit Verb, intransitive: Obtain a financial advantage or benefit, especially from an investment Obtain an advantage or benefit Verb, transitive: Be beneficial to	Person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God [The Prophet (among Muslims)] Muhammad [The Prophet (among Mormons)] Joseph Smith or one of his successors Person who advocates or speaks in a visionary way about a new belief, cause, or theory Person who makes or claims to be able to make predictions [The Prophets] The prophetic writings of the Old Testament or Hebrew scriptures, in particular: [In Christian use] The books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor prophets [In Jewish use] One of the three canonical divisions of the Hebrew Bible, distinguished from the Law and the Hagiographa, and comprising the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the twelve minor prophets
Examples:
Noun: That will be in the form of pretax profits. His eyes brightened at the prospect of profit. There’s no profit in screaming at referees from the bench. Verb, intransitive: The only people to profit from the entire episode were the lawyers. He profited greatly from his schooling. Not all children would profit from this kind of schooling. Verb, transitive: It would profit us to change our plans. What has all this time in school profited you? Nothing profits one so much as a sound education.	The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah served as one of God’s prophets through the rule of five kings of Judah. He was a prophet of revolutionary socialism. The anti-technology prophets of doom decry our dependence upon our gadgets.
Derivatives:
Adjective: nonprofit, profitless, proprofit Adverb: profitlessly Noun: nonprofit, profiteer, profiter, profitlessness	Adjective: prophetless, prophetlike Noun: prophethood, prophetess
History of the Word:
Middle English in the sense of advantage, benefit is from the Old French, from the Latin profectus meaning progress, profit, which is from proficere meaning to advance, which is from pro- (on behalf of) + facere (do). The verb is from the Old French profiter.	Middle English from the Old French prophete via the Latin from the Greek prophētēs meaning spokesman, from pro (before) + phētēs (speaker) from phēnai meaning speak.

Return to top

C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

Return to top

Resources for Profit versus Prophet

Apple Dictionary.com

The Free Dictionary: profit

Return to top

Pinterest Photo Credits

Jim Baker – PTL Broadcast, 1986, by Peter K. Levy is in the public domain or is under the CC0 license and Rev. Jimmy Swaggart by Jntracy75 is under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Both are via Wikimedia Commons with their backgrounds removed. Pastor Ted by Joe Lebowski is under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Flickr. The background of Money was distorted and made transparent and is by Geralt under the CC0 license, via Pixabay. All the images were resized.