lucre

Etymology

It came into English as Middle English lūcre, lucor, lucour or lucur, meaning “gain in money, profit; money; wages; illicit gain; advantage, benefit”. This came from Old French lucre or Latin lucrum (“advantage, profit; love of gain, avarice”), which in turn came from Proto-Indo-European *leh₂w- (“gain, profit”) plus *-tlom, a variant of *-trom, a suffix forming nouns denoting tools or instruments.