30 November 2022
To pound sand is an Americanism referring to performing a menial task, specifically compressing sand to create a firmer foundation for some sort of construction. The phrase appears in an 1857 poem by Alexander Smith:
We crept into a half-forgotten street
Of frail and tumbling houses propt by beams,
And ruined courts which, centuries before,
Rung oft to iron heels,—which palfreys pawed,
As down the mighty steps the Lady came
Bright as the summer morning,—peopled now
By outcasts, sullen men, bold girls who sat
Pounding sand in the sun.
It is also used in the form knows enough/has sense enough to pound sand, referring to someone who barely capable of such a menial task. This form is recorded a couple of decades later. From The Atchison, Kansas Globe of 26 December 1877:
We don’t know whether the young man you refer to knows enough to pound sand or not. His winking and blinking at you is certainly in bad taste, and if you have a big brother, you might have him pound the daylights out of him.
And the Iowa State Register of 15 November 1879:
Mr. Clark, the liveryman on the East Side, was taken in and done for by a very neat game, day before yesterday; Indeed, the game was played fine enough to hoodwink Mr. Clark’s attorney, and the gall of the thing comes in when the public reflect that they were done by a Norwegian who looked as if he didn’t have sense enough “to pound sand.”
Sometimes a longer form appears, with down a rat hole added. From the Denver Tribune of 23 October 1883:
The ground of the opposition of the Republican to the candidacy of Mr. Graham is a sham and a fraud patent and apparent to any man who has sense enough to pound sand down a rat hole.
It’s often used in the construction go pound sand, an expression of disdain or disagreement, similar to go fly a kite or go jump in a lake. But this phrasing doesn’t appear until the twentieth century. The early citations are in sports writing, but this is probably because sports writing was one of the chief avenues by which slang made its way into print, rather than the phrasing being peculiar to sports. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer of 26 May 1927:
“I see by some paper or other,” writes Chris Cross, the old Slippery Rock Normal halfback, “that Jimmy O’Connell still hopes to get even with the guys who ran him out of baseball. And I’m wondering why Jimmy never thought—to go pound Sand.”
And this piece in Indiana’s Muncie Sunday Star of 17 April 1927 is about a rule change in basketball that limited dribbling the ball down court:
So from a few little chats about town with fans and players we were almost convinced that we should go pound sand in rat holes or stove pipes and let basketball go to the dogs.
And we see the phrase outside of the sports pages in Massachusetts’s Springfield Republican of 30 September 1934:
In the agricultural areas much is being heard about soil erosion and the loss of the heavy crop-growing earth. But not so much is said regarding municipal centers and the loss of heavy taxpaying buildings. Give an owner a hard look and he tears the thing down and tells the tax assessors to go pound sand.
Sources:
“Answers to Correspondents.” The Globe (Atchison, Kansas), 26 December 1877, 1. Newspapers.com.
“Belford Hopeful.” Denver Tribune, 23 October 1883, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Doyle, James E. “The Sport Trail.” Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio), 26 May 1927, 27. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“False Pretenses.” Iowa State Register (Des Moines), 15 November 1879, 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Gordon, Bob. “Sport Splashes.” Muncie Sunday Star (Indiana), 17 April 1927, 11. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. pound, v.2.
“Matching Wits with the Tax Collector.” Springfield Republican (Massachusetts), 30 September 1934, 1E. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2006, s.v. pound, v.1.
Smith, Alexander. “A Boy’s Poem.” City Poems. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1857, 122. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Photo credit: Matthew Comer, US Navy, 2012. Public domain photo. Wikimedia Commons.