pay dirt
What miners seek
Pay dirt is earth or gravel containing enough gold or other valuable minerals to make mining profitable.
The phrase appears most often in strike pay dirt or hit pay dirt, meaning to find something valuable or achieve a desired result after searching or working toward it.
After months of research, the detective finally hit pay dirt with a witness who saw everything.
discovery
Forceful impact or stoppage
- gold rushMass migration seeking ore
- prospectingSearching for mineral wealth
- miningExtracting earth's resources
- mother lodePrincipal ore deposit
bonanza · excavation · unearth · digging · jackpot · nugget · vein · claim
strike
Forceful impact or stoppage
- gold rushMass migration seeking ore
- prospectingSearching for mineral wealth
- miningExtracting earth's resources
mother lode · bonanza · excavation · unearth · digging · jackpot · nugget · vein · claim · panning
breakthrough
Sudden important advance
- windfallUnanticipated lucky gain
- jackpotAccumulated gambling prize
- lucky breakUnforeseen favorable occurrence
payoff · reward · hit · score · triumph · achievement · result · outcome · gain · profit
- Gold RushCalifornia Gold Rush, gold miners, gold mining, gold flakes, gold nuggets
- money idiomsarm and a leg, break the bank, penny pincher, cheapskate, tightwad
- windfallsjackpot, windfall, grand prize, found money, big win
- Gold Countrygold mines, gold panning, Sutter's Mill, gold nuggets, forty-niners
- gold mininggold pan, pan, panning, nuggets, gold nugget
- gold prospectinggold pan, gold panning, panning, sluice box, sluice