Learn the Differences Between Profit and Prophet

The noun profit means a benefit, an advantageous gain, or a return on an investment. As a verb, profit means to derive advantage or to gain a profit.

The noun prophet refers to a person who speaks by divine inspiration, a person with powers of prediction, or a chief spokesperson for a cause or movement.

Examples

• "Globalization has favored the pursuit of profit and the accumulation of private wealth over the provision of public goods."
  (George Soros, The Bubble of American Supremacy, 2004)
• "Even while Shakespeare was alive, a few unscrupulous writers and publishers tried to profit from his reputation."
  (Jack Lynch, Becoming Shakespeare, 2007)
• Because ​Bob Dylan wrote and sang about improving society, some young people in the 1960s saw him as a prophet of change.
• "I felt . . . like some crazy Old Testament prophet going out into the desert to live on locusts and alkali water because God had summoned him in a dream."
  (Stephen King, Bag of Bones, 1998)

Practice Exercises

(a) "There was another part of Henry Wallace, no less important and certainly no less serious, that was known to few and fully understood by nobody. This was Wallace the mystic, the _____, the ardent seeker of cosmic truth."

(John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace, 2000)
(b) "Some of the bureaucrats were actually quite clever, and played the game well, sometimes even making a _____ on their trades and transactions."
(Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon, 2000)
(c) "I hope I'm smart enough and mature enough to _____ from the mistakes I made in the past."
(Julia Reed, The House on First Street, 2008)

Answers to Practice Exercises: Profit and Prophet

(a) "There was another part of Henry Wallace, no less important and certainly no less serious, that was known to few and fully understood by nobody. This was Wallace the mystic, the prophet, the ardent seeker of cosmic truth."
(John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace, 2000)
(b) "Some of the bureaucrats were actually quite clever, and played the game well, sometimes even making a profit on their trades and transactions."
(Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon, 2000)
(c) "I hope I'm smart enough and mature enough to profit from the mistakes I made in the past."
(Julia Reed, The House on First Street, 2008)