Definition of "nonproductive" []

• Not yielding or producing: nonproductive land. (adjective)
• Not engaged in the direct production of goods: nonproductive personnel. (adjective)
• A person who produces no useful work. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "IHS Global Insight economist Brian Bethune calls it the gold trap: Investors are parking their funds in nonproductive assets like gold that undermine the Fed 's efforts to simulate activity."
• "And if they are focusing on things that are nonproductive, which is what they're doing now, then, you know, Madeleine is somewhere."
• ""We're hoping to encourage changes in roadside management practices, how public lands are managed and how people are managing what they would call nonproductive land or marginal land that they might own.""