See pound sand in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "In the 19th century, it appears to have been used as a mild insult, as the act of pounding sand is considered to be a menial task which is so simple that anyone could do it. Someone who didn't know how to pound sand (perhaps into a rat hole) was not very smart, but also one which causes no fruition, therefore suggesting those who perform it are somehow hopelessly mentally impaired.\nBy the 21st century, most users of this phrase do not know enough to pound sand into a rat hole, and use the phrase to indicate a useless activity.",
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{
"form": "pound dirt",
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{
"form": "pound salt",
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]
},
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"form": "pound sand into a rathole",
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}
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"ref": "1871 January 20, Everett Chamberlain, “My Christmas at Salt Lake”, in The Lakeside Monthly:",
"text": "\"Bishop McKillup lives there. He's got only three wives, and they three all put together don’t know enough to pound sand with a mallet, with a receipt on the handle.\"\nFor which striking symbol of imbecility I should have given Jake a good deal of credit, if I had not heard him using it several times before as a regular stock expression",
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"glosses": [
"To engage in a simple useful activity, which anyone would know how to perform, other than those who are incapable of any simple activity"
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"(idiomatic) To engage in a simple useful activity, which anyone would know how to perform, other than those who are incapable of any simple activity"
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"ref": "2010, Eric Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan, HarperCollins, published 2010, →ISBN, page 44:",
"text": "[…] Without men on the ground, we'll be pounding sand.\"",
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"ref": "2011, Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir:",
"text": "He told Shelton we needed to \"unleash holy hell.\" “We're not just going to pound sand,” he added.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To engage in a futile activity."
],
"id": "en-pound_sand-en-verb-u~FeAb7H",
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],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To engage in a futile activity."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"_dis1": "1 96 3",
"sense": "do something futile",
"word": "get blood from a stone"
},
{
"_dis1": "1 96 3",
"sense": "do something futile",
"word": "piss up a rope"
}
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"text": "All you do is complain. Why don't you go pound sand up your ass and stop bothering the line staff.",
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"ref": "2003 March 15, Christopher Koch, “Showdown at the 6.0 Corral”, in CIO:",
"text": "\"The price to us was going to be $3 million, and we had four months to pay before the Licensing 6.0 deadline. We told Microsoft to go pound sand.\"",
"type": "quote"
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"glosses": [
"To go away; get lost; go to hell."
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"(idiomatic, dismissal) To go away; get lost; go to hell."
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"_dis1": "0 0 100",
"sense": "go away",
"word": "get lost"
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{
"_dis1": "0 0 100",
"sense": "go away",
"word": "go fly a kite"
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{
"_dis1": "0 0 100",
"sense": "go away",
"word": "take a hike"
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{
"_dis1": "0 0 100",
"sense": "go away",
"word": "fuck off"
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"word": "pound sand"
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"etymology_text": "In the 19th century, it appears to have been used as a mild insult, as the act of pounding sand is considered to be a menial task which is so simple that anyone could do it. Someone who didn't know how to pound sand (perhaps into a rat hole) was not very smart, but also one which causes no fruition, therefore suggesting those who perform it are somehow hopelessly mentally impaired.\nBy the 21st century, most users of this phrase do not know enough to pound sand into a rat hole, and use the phrase to indicate a useless activity.",
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"form": "pounded sand",
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{
"form": "pound dirt",
"tags": [
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{
"form": "pound salt",
"tags": [
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},
{
"form": "pound sand into a rathole",
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"To engage in a simple useful activity, which anyone would know how to perform, other than those who are incapable of any simple activity"
],
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"(idiomatic) To engage in a simple useful activity, which anyone would know how to perform, other than those who are incapable of any simple activity"
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"text": "[…] Without men on the ground, we'll be pounding sand.\"",
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85
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"glosses": [
"To engage in a futile activity."
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"(idiomatic) To engage in a futile activity."
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144
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"ref": "2003 March 15, Christopher Koch, “Showdown at the 6.0 Corral”, in CIO:",
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"type": "quote"
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],
"glosses": [
"To go away; get lost; go to hell."
],
"links": [
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"dismissal",
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],
[
"go away",
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"get lost",
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"(idiomatic, dismissal) To go away; get lost; go to hell."
],
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"synonyms": [
{
"sense": "do something futile",
"word": "get blood from a stone"
},
{
"sense": "do something futile",
"word": "piss up a rope"
},
{
"sense": "go away",
"word": "get lost"
},
{
"sense": "go away",
"word": "go fly a kite"
},
{
"sense": "go away",
"word": "take a hike"
},
{
"sense": "go away",
"word": "fuck off"
}
],
"word": "pound sand"
}
Download raw JSONL data for pound sand meaning in English (4.6kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-03 using wiktextract (87ad358 and ea19a0a). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.