Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

pound sand

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.08 in modern English

Syllables: pound sand
IPA

13

Scrabble Score

9

Letters

1

Syllables

7

Unique Chars

Meaning

verb

To engage in a simple, useless activity that anyone would reasonably know how to perform.

Informal

verb

To engage in a futile activity.

Informal

verb

To go away; get lost; go to hell; to waste one's own time (with some other meaningless task) rather than waste the speaker's time with something equally irritating or pointless.

Derogatory; Slang

Example Sentences

""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." For 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"
"[…] Without men on the ground, we'll be pounding sand.""
"He told Shelton we needed to "unleash holy hell." “We're not just going to pound sand,” he added."
"All you do is complain. Why don't you go pound sand up your ass and stop bothering the line staff."
""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.""

Etymology

First use appears c. 1857 in a poem by the Scottish poet Alexander Smith. Used as an example both of an activity so simple that almost anyone could do it and of an activity so pointless that only a fool would do it.

Usage

Inflected Forms

pounds sand (present, singular) pounding sand (participle, present) pounded sand (participle, past) pounded sand (past)

Phrases

enough sense to pound sand into a rathole

Frequently Paired Words

enough sense to pound sand into a rathole

Synonyms

get blood out of a stone piss up a rope pound dirt pound salt pound sand into a rathole get lost go fly a kite take a hike kick rocks fuck off

Questions

What does pound sand mean?: To engage in a simple, useless activity that anyone would reasonably know how to perform.
Where does pound sand come from?: First use appears c. 1857 in a poem by the Scottish poet Alexander Smith. Used as an example both of an activity so simple that almost anyone could do it and of an activity so pointless that only a fool would do it.

How to pronounce pound sand

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