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Pay dirt   /peɪ dərt/   Listen
noun
Pay  n.  
1.
Satisfaction; content.
2.
An equivalent or return for money due, goods purchased, or services performed; salary or wages for work or service; compensation; recompense; payment; hire; as, the pay of a clerk; the pay of a soldier. "Where only merit constant pay receives." "There is neither pay nor plunder to be got."
Full pay, the whole amount of wages or salary; maximum pay; especially, the highest pay or allowance to civil or military officers of a certain rank, without deductions.
Half pay. See under Half.
Pay day, the day of settlement of accounts.
Pay dirt (Mining), earth which yields a profit to the miner. (Western U.S.)
Pay office, a place where payment is made.
Pay roll,
(a)
a roll or list of persons entitled to payment, with the amounts due; now usually one word, payroll.
(b)
the total sum of money which is paid to all employees on payday.


Pay rock, Pay dirt  n.  
1.
(Mining) Earth, rock, etc., which yields a profit to the miner. (Western U. S.)
2.
A discovery, especially after an exploratory process, which yields a profit or sought-after benefit; used especially in the phrase "to hit pay dirt".





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Pay dirt" Quotes from Famous Books



... descended to a hole far beneath by a rope ladder, life depending on a spike driven in the rock above and a secure handhold, for the handful of "pay dirt" two peons were grubbing down out of a lower veta, a long narrow alleyway of soft earth and small stones that stretched away into the interior of the mountain between solid walls of rock. No inexperienced man would have supposed this mud worth more than any other. But silver ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Government might make a claim upon it, there was no particular necessity for secrecy, so we had up a man from the mines near by with drills and dynamite, who speedily shattered the block into a million pieces, more or less. Alas! there was no trace in its debris of 'pay dirt,' as the western miner puts it. While the dynamite expert was on the spot, we induced him to shatter the anvil as well as the block of cement, and then the workman, doubtless thinking the new earl was as insane as the old one had been, shouldered his tools, and ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr


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