beneficial

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

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

beneficial (comparative more beneficial, superlative most beneficial)

1. Helpful or good to something or someone.
   • 2013 June 29, “A punch in the gut”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 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.

   Recycling and reusing garbage can be beneficial to the environment.

2. Relating to a benefice.

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

• maleficial, nocuous, damaging, harmful (doing harm to someone)
• innocuous, undamaging, harmless (doing no harm; doing neither harm nor good)

• beneficialness
• beneficial owner

beneficial (plural beneficials)

1. Something that is beneficial.
   • 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.