pay dirt
Americannoun
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soil, gravel, or ore that can be mined profitably.
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Informal. any source of success or wealth; a fortunate discovery or profitable venture.
After months of experimentation, the scientists finally hit pay dirt.
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Football. end zone.
noun
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a deposit rich enough in minerals to be worth mining
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informal to achieve one's objective
Etymology
Origin of pay dirt
An Americanism dating back to 1855–60
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Last year, it attained a valuation of $2.96 billion and recently finished two years of digitizing maps and other documents from the state archives in neighboring Zambia, where it hit pay dirt.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 28, 2026
Their initial attempts failed to find nematodes in lakebed sediments, prompting Jung to take a hammer to samples of microbialites where she struck biological pay dirt.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 13, 2024
It was amusing for a while to watch celebrities squirm in trying to say the right thing when asked about being a nepo baby—a topic interviewers quickly learned led to sound-bite pay dirt.
From Slate ● Jan. 30, 2024
He’d strike pay dirt with “Come Monday” and, especially, “Margaritaville,” songs that brought him into the pop mainstream and established the foundation of a career that brought him from the beach into Wall Street boardrooms.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2023
Deutsche Bank, especially, felt something like shame that Goldman Sachs had been the first to find this particular pay dirt.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
