"A financial gain, esp. the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something"
There's nothing about theft or any of the other nonsense you're talking about. And dividends, salaries, and stock trades are 3 very different ways of making money from a business.
Profit is income that is greater then expenses and is the property of the business and/or its stakeholders. Profit can be used to pay dividends, be reinvested in the company, can be used as collateral, or added to the value of a company (sometimes represented through increased stock values).
You didn't copy the whole definition. You need to know the whole thing to know the whole thing.
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
"A financial gain, esp. the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something"
There's nothing about theft or any of the other nonsense you're talking about. And dividends, salaries, and stock trades are 3 very different ways of making money from a business.
Profit is income that is greater then expenses and is the property of the business and/or its stakeholders. Profit can be used to pay dividends, be reinvested in the company, can be used as collateral, or added to the value of a company (sometimes represented through increased stock values).
You didn't copy the whole definition. You need to know the whole thing to know the whole thing.
Here try a real dictionary:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/profit