"pay dirt" meaning in All languages combined

See pay dirt on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Etymology: 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
    Sense id: en-pay_dirt-en-noun-XRv~0h~b Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 75 25 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

Download JSON data for pay dirt meaning in All languages combined (2.8kB)

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  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "pay",
        "3": "dirt"
      },
      "expansion": "pay + dirt",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "pay + dirt",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
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      "expansion": "pay dirt (uncountable)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Mining",
          "orig": "en:Mining",
          "parents": [
            "Industries",
            "Business",
            "Economics",
            "Society",
            "Social sciences",
            "All topics",
            "Sciences",
            "Fundamental"
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "75 25",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore."
      ],
      "id": "en-pay_dirt-en-noun-XRv~0h~b",
      "links": [
        [
          "mining",
          "mining#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "Earth",
          "earth"
        ],
        [
          "ore",
          "ore"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(mining) Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "82 18",
          "word": "paydirt"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "82 18",
          "word": "pay-dirt"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "business",
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          "name": "English terms with collocations",
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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",
          "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": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "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": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "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": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A profitable area or period; success."
      ],
      "id": "en-pay_dirt-en-noun-2DpNemWE",
      "links": [
        [
          "profitable",
          "profitable"
        ],
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          "success",
          "success"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figuratively) A profitable area or period; success."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "pay dirt"
}
{
  "categories": [
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  "etymology_templates": [
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      "args": {
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        "2": "pay",
        "3": "dirt"
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      "name": "compound"
    }
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  "etymology_text": "pay + dirt",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "pay dirt (uncountable)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  ],
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "mining",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(mining) Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
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      "topics": [
        "business",
        "mining"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with collocations",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "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",
          "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": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "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": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "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": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A profitable area or period; success."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "profitable",
          "profitable"
        ],
        [
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        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figuratively) A profitable area or period; success."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "paydirt"
    },
    {
      "word": "pay-dirt"
    }
  ],
  "word": "pay dirt"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.