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pay dirt, hit

pay dirt, hit idiom

Also, strike pay dirt. Make a valuable discovery or large profit, as in We've been researching the source of that quotation for a month and we finally hit pay dirt in the Library of Congress. This idiom, from the mid-1800s, refers to a miner's finding gold or other precious metals while sifting soil. By the late 1800s it had been transferred to other lucrative discoveries.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.