MOTHER LODE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Mother lode

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/mˈəðər loʊd/ Listen

noun

Lode n.

A water course or way; a reach of water. "Down that long, dark lode... he and his brother skated home in triumph."

(Mining) A body of ore visibly separated from adjacent rock.

Especially: (Mining) Any regular vein or course of valuable mineral, whether metallic or not.

Hence: A concentrated supply or source of something valuable.

mother lode a large concentrated source of mineral or other valuable thing, from which lesser sources have been derived; often used figuratively. The term may have been originally applied to real or imagined large deposits of gold from which smaller granules were washed downstream, there constituting a diluted source of gold, and hinting at the richer source from which they were derived; as, to hit the mother lode.

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Etymology of 'Mother lode'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mother lode" Quotes from Famous Books

... and was wishful to own one again. They laid up on the worn benches of the Silver Dollar or the Same Old Luck like beached vessels, and their talk ran on endlessly of "strike" and "contact" and "mother lode," and worked around to fights and hold-ups, villainy, haunts, and the hoodoo of the ...

— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin