Definition
In law, "profit" carries distinct meanings depending on context. Three primary uses appear across the legal corpus:
1. Profit à prendre (property law). An incorporeal hereditament — a real property right authorizing the holder to enter another's land and take something of natural value from it, such as timber, minerals, game, fish, peat, or grass. The right is in the soil or its produce, not merely in the use of the surface. It is a right recognized at common law and is distinguishable from an easement by the element of taking: an easement permits use; a profit permits extraction.
2. Financial gain (commercial and tax law). The surplus remaining after deducting costs, expenses, and charges from gross receipts or revenues. In commercial contexts, profit is the measure of gain from a transaction or enterprise. In tax and accounting law, the precise method of calculation — gross profit, net profit, operating profit — matters enormously and is defined by applicable statute or regulatory rule.
3. Equitable remedy / unjust enrichment (restitution). The gain or advantage wrongfully obtained by a defendant, which equity may require to be disgorged and returned to the claimant. Here "profit" is less a definition of income than a measure of liability: what the wrongdoer made, not what the claimant lost.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An excess of revenue over costs in a transaction or enterprise; financial gain. Also used loosely to mean any advantage or benefit.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The gain resulting from the employment of capital in any transaction"; also broadly, "any accession of good from labor or exertion."
Editorial note: In common usage, "profit" almost always refers to financial surplus — money made after costs. The legal term carries this meaning in commercial and tax contexts, but the property-law sense (profit à prendre) has no common-language parallel at all. A researcher who sees "profit" in a conveyancing instrument, deed, or common-law property case must immediately consider whether a right to take from land is meant, not financial gain. The equitable usage — profit as measure of what a wrongdoer must disgorge — also diverges from everyday usage, where one "earns" a profit; in equity, the defendant may be compelled to surrender a profit they are not entitled to keep regardless of the claimant's own loss.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Profit à prendre in gross: A profit right that exists independently of any dominant tenement. It belongs to a person, not to land, and is therefore assignable and transferable separately from any parcel.
Profit à prendre appurtenant: A profit attached to a dominant tenement and passing with the land upon conveyance.
Exclusive profit: The holder alone may exercise the right to take; the landowner is excluded from the same taking during the grant.
Several profit: Similar to exclusive — one person holds the right to the exclusion of others, including the owner, as to the specific subject matter.
Common of profit (profit in common): Shared among multiple holders, often a defined class, such as commoners on a manor.
Gross profit (commercial): Revenue minus cost of goods sold, before operating expenses.
Net profit (commercial): Revenue minus all costs, including operating expenses, interest, and taxes.
Short-swing profit (securities law): Gain realized by a corporate insider on purchases and sales of company equity within a six-month window, subject to disgorgement under Section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act.
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Why It Matters in Research
The single greatest research trap with "profit" is failing to recognize which of the three legal meanings is operative in a given source. In historical property materials — deeds, conveyancing treatises, manorial records, and early common-law cases — "profit" almost invariably refers to the profit à prendre. In nineteenth-century commercial cases and early corporate law, it refers to financial gain. The two meanings travel in entirely different doctrinal streams, cite different authorities, and raise different research questions.
For property researchers: the profit à prendre is one of the most consistently misidentified rights in historical sources. It is easily confused with an easement (no taking element) and with a license (no property interest, purely personal, revocable). In older English sources and early American materials following English common law, the term may appear without the French qualifier — "a profit," "right of profit," or "taking profit" — requiring the researcher to read context carefully. Rights of common (common of pasture, common of piscary, common of estovers) are species of profit à prendre and are indexed separately in historical dictionaries and encyclopedias; cross-referencing is essential.
For commercial and corporate researchers: "profit" in financial statements, partnership agreements, and corporate instruments will be defined by the instrument or applicable statute. Historical sources often use "profit" interchangeably with "gain" and "proceeds" in ways that modern accounting law would treat as meaningfully distinct. Tax cases post-dating the Sixteenth Amendment developed a more precise vocabulary; earlier sources should be read with that anachronism in mind.
For remedies researchers: "accounting of profits" and "disgorgement" are related but not identical concepts depending on jurisdiction and era. Some historical equity sources treat an accounting of profits as a remedy co-extensive with equitable relief for breach of fiduciary duty or infringement; others treat it as a standalone remedy in restitution. The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia entry on this topic navigates the distinction.
In the corporate securities context, the short-swing profit rule under Section 16(b) is a strict-liability, statutory mechanism with its own specialized body of case law. "Profit" under that provision is calculated by a specific matching rule (lowest purchase price against highest sale price within the six-month window) that produces figures having no necessary connection to actual economic gain.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence treat "profit" primarily through the lens of the profit à prendre, consistent with the legal dictionary tradition of the period, which was heavily oriented toward real property and common-law doctrine. Their treatment aligns with the standard English common-law understanding: a profit is an incorporeal hereditament distinct from an easement by virtue of the taking element, and distinct from a mere license by virtue of being a property right running with the land or person.
This framing reflects nineteenth-century legal scholarship's deep roots in English common law and its emphasis on real property doctrine. What the historical dictionaries of this period generally do not do is provide comprehensive treatment of "profit" in the commercial or accounting sense — that vocabulary was developing alongside corporate law and had not yet stabilized into defined legal doctrine. Researchers using Rapalje & Lawrence for financial-context definitions of "profit" will find the sources thin; for property-law context, the treatment is authoritative within its era.
The French form "profit à prendre" — meaning "profit to take" — appears consistently across English and American legal dictionaries as the formal designation of the property right, though many historical instruments and some courts used anglicized or abbreviated forms. Researchers should search both forms in historical databases.
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Jurisdictional Note
Profit à prendre doctrine is recognized across common-law jurisdictions, but the extent to which it survives in modern American land law varies by state. Some states have assimilated profit rights into easement doctrine or regulated them by statute. In England and Wales, the Land Registration Act 2002 significantly altered how profits à prendre are created and protected. Researchers working in civil-law jurisdictions will find no direct analog; the closest civil-law concepts are servitudes, but the correspondence is imperfect.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Property Law Encyclopedia — Profits: Right to Take (Profit à Prendre)
Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia — Accounting of Profits: Disgorgement of Wrongful Gains
Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia — Federal Securities: Insider Trading: Short-Swing Profits (Section 16(b))
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