pay dirt

See also: paydirt

English

Alternative forms

• paydirt, pay-dirt

Etymology

pay +‎ dirt

Noun

pay dirt (uncountable)

1. (mining) Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore.

   Coordinate terms: paystreak, sidepay

2. (figuratively) A profitable area or period; success.

   to hit pay dirt

   • 1997 [1990], David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN:

     Isuzu Inc. hit pay dirt in the late '80s with its series of “Joe Isuzu” spots, featuring an oily, Satanic-looking salesman who told whoppers about Isuzu's genuine llama-skin upholstery and ability to run on tapwater.

   • 2007, Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, Picador, page 805:

     Wittgenstein was closer to the pay dirt in one of his letters to the philosopher G. E. Moore, when he talked about thought with due attention to what fascinated Heisenberg on his deathbed: turbulence.

   • 2024 April 4, Dennis Overbye, quoting Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, “A Tantalizing ‘Hint’ That Astronomers Got Dark Energy All Wrong”, in Thew New York Times‎^[1]:

     The DESI team had not expected to hit pay dirt so soon, Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley lab and a spokeswoman for the project, said in an interview.

Anagrams

• atrypid, day trip, day-trip, daytrip