the.com/goldmine
Proof that the real money is always in whatever nobody bothered to dig yet.
means A source — a business, idea, or asset — that keeps producing wealth or valuable results, often more than expected.
from Literal at first: an actual mine yielding gold. English speakers started using it figuratively from the 1800s onward for anything that generates riches with similar reliability — the leap from 'hole in the ground that pays off' to 'any venture that pays off' was an easy, obvious one, and it stuck.
- origin
- literally meant a gold-producing mine, 1829
- figurative shift
- metaphor for profitable asset emerged by 1882
- linguistic irony
- most goldmines never actually struck gold
- modern usage
- now describes data, not dirt