profitability (n.)

c. 1300, "yielding spiritual or moral benefit, useful," from profit (v.) + -able or from Old French profitable, porfitable. From mid-14c. as "advantageous, expedient, helpful." Specific sense of "money-making" is attested from 1758. Related: Profitably; profitableness.

word-forming element making abstract nouns from adjectives and meaning "condition or quality of being ______," from Middle English -ite, from Old French -ete (Modern French -ité) and directly from Latin -itatem (nominative -itas), suffix denoting state or condition, composed of -i- (from the stem or else a connective) + the common abstract suffix -tas (see -ty (2)).

Roughly, the word in -ity usually means the quality of being what the adjective describes, or concretely an instance of the quality, or collectively all the instances; & the word in -ism means the disposition, or collectively all those who feel it. [Fowler]