Accounting Profit

Well, it's profit. But with the word "accounting" thrown in there beforehand, it implies that there's something semi-fishy about whether or not there really was profit in a given business or a given transaction.

Like...you had to buy a factory to stamp out the 250 tractors you sold, and if you depreciated that factory to 20% of its cost over 40 years, then, in fact, this year's production of those 250 tractors was profitable, but not on a cash-on-cash basis. Only on an accounting basis, where liberal rules were applied to the rate of depreciation of the factory. Huzzah Accounting Profit.