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Glite Dictionary
margin of profit

margin of profit

1 3.9
The percent of sales that remains as money after paying costs
  • noun
  • /ˈmɑrdʒɪn əv ˈprɒfɪt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : margen de beneficio
  • To maintain a healthy margin of profit, businesses need to carefully manage their expenses against sales revenue.
  • a small margin of profit
  • a very narrow margin of profit

Examples

  • Clubs functioned with a very narrow margin of profit.

    Academic text (2004)

  • My margin of profit is already small enough that if I waited for the baby and came back with my mother and Pam, I could have delivered the Mirror the rest of the month without making a dime.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • Given the expense of chemical fertilizers, the manure was his margin of profit.

    Academic text (2004)

  • Briefly stated, the economic aspect concerned the cost of production and the margin of profit; the cultural element related to the nature of the text and the social identity of the prospective readership.

    Academic text (1994)

  • What united them at the outset and continues to unify them now is a certain desire to control their own natural resources and obtain a larger margin of profit on their commodity.

    Academic text (1993)

  • The company reported a margin of profit of 20%, indicating they earned more from sales than they spent on production.

  • With a slim margin of profit, local stores struggle to stay afloat amid rising costs and competition.

Synonyms

margin
vsmargin of profit
  • Specialized
92 5.5

The amount a seller keeps after costs, usually shown as a percent

is based on net sales and overall costs rather than only production cost
profit margin
vsmargin of profit
  • Specialized
42 3.6

Difference between the cost to make or buy something and its selling price shown as a percent

uses net sales as the base for that calculation

Antonyms

loss
695 2.1

Money lost by a business or person

deficit
674 4.3

An amount by which money or resources are less than needed

Surface Forms

margin of profit singular
margins of profit plural

Morphology

margin + of + profit

The phrase's meaning is directly and compositionally built from 'margin' (a difference/percentage) and 'profit' (net gain), with 'of' simply linking them; a learner who knows the constituents can infer it denotes the percentage/amount by which profit exceeds costs. This noun-complement pattern is cross-linguistically common (e.g., Spanish 'margen de beneficio'), so it will be immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner.

Etymology

The term margin of profit uses a simple picture: margin is the small space left at the edge and profit is the money left after costs, so the phrase shows 'how much money is left'. That's why it means the amount a business keeps from sales 'after paying costs'.