earnings
Americannoun
plural noun
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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.
But shares in the company tumbled on the back of the earnings report, with investors generally spooked by the huge amounts of money being spent on AI.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
SpaceX shares fell more than 13% Wednesday after it reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
Lawmaker Aumua Amata, who represents American Samoa in the US House of Representatives, said she worried deep-sea mining could disrupt fisheries providing the vast bulk of the territory's export earnings.
From Barron's ● Aug. 6, 2026
Musk pushed back against sceptics on an earnings call: "I think people are really underestimating Starlink".
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
Howard did his best to warm them to the idea of rescheduling the match, even setting aside his heretofore paramount goal of breaking Sun Beau’s earnings mark.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
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.
