earnings
Americannoun
plural noun
-
money or other payment earned
-
the profits of an enterprise
Etymology
Origin of earnings
before 1050; Middle English erning, Old English earning, earnung merit, pay. See earn 1, -ing 1, -s 3
Explanation
Earnings are the amount of money you make from doing a job. You'll be a lot more excited about babysitting when you learn your earnings will be more than generous. Most earnings come from work that you've done, although money you earn from an investment can also be called earnings. Any financial profit or gain you make go into the earnings category, since you earn that money, whether through work, luck, or intelligence. The Proto-Germanic root, *aznon, means "do harvest work."
Vocabulary lists containing earnings
One Idea, Part 1
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Century 21 Accounting, 9e, Chapters 11-14
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Asian stocks slipped Monday as the dour mood that sullied last week's trading continued, with investors gearing up for a crucial run of central bank decisions and tech earnings.
From Barron's ● Oct. 26, 2026
Wall Street has rested much of its optimism about the stock market on a surge in corporate earnings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 25, 2026
Full-service Instacart shoppers are generally independent contractors, paid by the batch rather than a guaranteed hourly wage, with earnings varying according to the order, distance, demand and tips.
From Salon ● Oct. 25, 2026
Because of the former, a dollar of revenue translates into higher earnings, and because of the latter a dollar of earnings translates into a higher stock price.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 25, 2026
Those sorts of earnings flashes are to the news business what vanilla is to the ice cream business—a basic commodity that actually can be made anywhere in the flat world.
From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
