beneficial

From Late Latin beneficiālis (“beneficial”), from Latin beneficium (“benefit, favor, kindness”).

• enPR: bĕnəfĭsh'əl, IPA^(key): /ˌbɛnəˈfɪʃəl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪʃəl

beneficial (comparative more beneficial, superlative most beneficial)

1. Helpful or good to something or someone.

   Recycling and reusing garbage can be beneficial to the environment.

   • 2013 June 29, “A punch in the gut”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, pages 72–3:

     Mostly, the microbiome is beneficial. It helps with digestion and enables people to extract a lot more calories from their food than would otherwise be possible. Research over the past few years, however, has implicated it in diseases from atherosclerosis to asthma to autism.

2. Relating to a benefice.

• (helpful or good): advantageous, behooveful (archaic), helpful, useful
• (relating to a benefice): usufructuary, usufructuous

• (antonym(s) of “doing harm to someone”): detrimental, maleficial, nocuous, damaging, harmful
• (antonym(s) of “doing neither good nor harm”): innocuous, undamaging, harmless

beneficial (plural beneficials)

1. Something that provides a benefit.
   • 1997, Insect Control Guide, volume 9, Meister Publishing, page 29:

     Daytime temperatures may be too hot for just-released beneficials, and birds and other predators are out in full force during the day.

Learned borrowing from Late Latin beneficiālis

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic) [bə.nə.fi.siˈal]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [be.ne.fi.siˈal]

beneficial m or f (masculine and feminine plural beneficials)

1. (relational) of a benefice

• benefici
• beneficiar

• “beneficial”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007