pay dirt

1. 1.

   ore that yields a substantial profit to the miner

   Broaderore
2. 2.

   a profitable success

   “the inventor worked for years before hitting pay dirt”

   Broadersuccess

Questions about pay dirt

What does pay dirt mean?

pay dirt means "ore that yields a substantial profit to the miner". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is pay dirt a common word?

pay dirt is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.