Definition of "turn a profit" []

• To obtain profit from an investment. (verb)
• To gain money or to gain materially. (verb)

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• "Anyway, the French may be trying to get rid of us, but in the meantime we're a market for their manufactured goods, so the Governor, the Marquis de la Fayette, he doesn't mind letting his people turn a profit from our trade as long as we're here."
• "If the ancient biographical tradition can be trusted, he had started out selling salted fish: the kind of petty retailer who, in Ciceros opinion, could turn a profit only by making a habit of lying."