bonanza bə-ˈnan-zə noun
1. a sudden happening that brings good fortune (as a sudden opportunity to make money)
2. an especially rich vein of precious ore
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The word bonanza has appeared in 98 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on March 18 in “A Small Country, an Oil Giant, and Their Shared Fortune” by Anatoly Kurmanaev and Clifford Krauss:
GEORGETOWN, Guyana — They are the odd couple of the global oil patch: Guyana is a poor former British sugar colony. Exxon Mobil is America’s largest oil company.
They came to depend on each other after a series of extraordinary oil discoveries off Guyana’s coast transformed the small South American country’s fortunes and boosted the oil company’s assets at a time when its fortunes were flagging elsewhere.
… “Our people have to feel they are a part of it,” said Newell Dennison, the head of Guyana’s oil exploration regulator, about the oil bonanza. “There are fundamental issues about the country’s direction that ought to be addressed at the national level. I’m concerned it’s not happening as it should.”
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