"pay dirt" meaning in All languages combined

See pay dirt on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Etymology: From pay + dirt. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|pay|dirt}} pay + dirt Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} pay dirt (uncountable)
  1. (mining) Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore. Tags: uncountable Categories (topical): Mining Synonyms: paydirt, pay-dirt Derived forms: hit pay dirt
    Sense id: en-pay_dirt-en-noun-XRv~0h~b Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 84 16 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 94 6 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 96 4 Topics: business, mining
  2. (figuratively) A profitable area or period; success. Tags: figuratively, uncountable
    Sense id: en-pay_dirt-en-noun-2DpNemWE Categories (other): English terms with collocations

Alternative forms

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  "etymology_text": "From pay + dirt.",
  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Mining",
          "orig": "en:Mining",
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            "Sciences",
            "Fundamental"
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          "_dis": "84 16",
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          "_dis": "94 6",
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          "_dis": "96 4",
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        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "word": "hit pay dirt"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore."
      ],
      "id": "en-pay_dirt-en-noun-XRv~0h~b",
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(mining) Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
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          "_dis1": "82 18",
          "word": "paydirt"
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          "word": "pay-dirt"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "to hit pay dirt",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "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:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, Picador, page 805:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2024 April 4, Dennis Overbye, quoting Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, “A Tantalizing ‘Hint’ That Astronomers Got Dark Energy All Wrong”, in Thew New York Times:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A profitable area or period; success."
      ],
      "id": "en-pay_dirt-en-noun-2DpNemWE",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figuratively) A profitable area or period; success."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "pay dirt"
}
{
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      "word": "hit pay dirt"
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  "etymology_text": "From pay + dirt.",
  "head_templates": [
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        "Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore."
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        "(mining) Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore."
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          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "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:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, Picador, page 805:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2024 April 4, Dennis Overbye, quoting Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, “A Tantalizing ‘Hint’ That Astronomers Got Dark Energy All Wrong”, in Thew New York Times:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
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      ],
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        "(figuratively) A profitable area or period; success."
      ],
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        "figuratively",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "paydirt"
    },
    {
      "word": "pay-dirt"
    }
  ],
  "word": "pay dirt"
}

Download raw JSONL data for pay dirt meaning in All languages combined (2.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.