earnings
Americannoun
plural noun
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money or other payment earned
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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.
Strong artificial-intelligence earnings have driven stocks higher, but that doesn’t mean much for Bitcoin and its peers, which rely on sentiment rather than fundamentals.
From Barron's • May 7, 2026
The company swung to a surprise 56-cent per-share adjusted loss, after recording $1.78 in adjusted earnings per share in the same period a year before.
From MarketWatch • May 7, 2026
Stripping out certain one-time items, Planet Fitness posted adjusted earnings of 74 cents a share, exceeding the mean analyst estimate of 63 cents a share, as per FactSet.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 7, 2026
Brokerage firm Robinhood Markets reported first-quarter earnings last week, and some analysts have said those results don’t bode well for Coinbase.
From Barron's • May 7, 2026
Most of Marian’s earnings from concert appearances went to her mother, who was still taking in laundry and scrubbing floors, and to her sisters, who were still in school.
From "The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights" by Russell Freedman
Definitions 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.
