lode

noun

Etymology: Doublet of load, which has however become semantically restricted. The now-archaic lode continues the old sense of Old English lād (“way, course, journey”) but by the 19th century survived only dialectally in the sense of “watercourse”, as a technical term in mining, and in the compounds lodestone, lodestar.

1. A way or path; a road.
2. A watercourse.
3. A vein of metallic ore that lies within definite boundaries, or within a fissure.

   “The metals traditionally sought in the Bristol Bay region have been gold and copper, mostly in deposits near Lake Iliamna. An exception is a gold lode discovered about 1930 near Sleitat Mountain (4), where about $200 in gold was recovered from small quartz veins near the periphery of a small granitic intrusive body.”

4. A rich source of supply.

   “In recent years, Jack Grieve of the department of English and linguistics at the University of Birmingham in England has embraced Twitter as a bountiful lode for looking at language-use patterns.”