Word.ws English Dictionary

hit pay dirt

hit pay dirt verb: to strike it rich; to get lucky or have a big break.

Verb

hit pay dirt (third-person singular simple present hits pay dirt, present participle hitting pay dirt, simple past and past participle hit pay dirt)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To strike it rich; to get lucky or have a big break.
    • With his third novel he finally hit pay dirt and wrote a bestseller.
    • But after moving to New York, he soon found success on the stage, beginning with a small role in Tall Story (1959), and within a few years hit pay dirt as a newly wed in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park on Broadway.2025 September 20, Nicolas Rapold, “Obituary: Robert Redford”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6

Forms of hit pay dirt

third-person singular presenthits pay dirt
present participlehitting pay dirt
past participlehit pay dirt
pasthit pay dirt
alternative formhit paydirt

Questions about hit pay dirt

What does hit pay dirt mean?
Hit pay dirt means to strike it rich; to get lucky or have a big break.
What part of speech is hit pay dirt?
Hit pay dirt is a verb.
What is the past tense of hit pay dirt?
The past tense of hit pay dirt is hit pay dirt.

Words near hit pay dirt in the dictionary

  1. hit out
  2. hit out of the park
  3. hit parade
  4. hit parades
  5. hit pause
  6. hit pay dirt
  7. hit paydirt
  8. hit piece
  9. hit pieces
  10. hit point
  11. hit points

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hit pay dirt (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-hit paydirt.ogg.

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