pound sand

English

Alternative forms

pound dirt, pound salt, pound sand into a rathole

Etymology

Of 19th-century origin. 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.

Pronunciation

Audio (General Australian): (file)

Verb

pound sand (third-person singular simple present pounds sand, present participle pounding sand, simple past and past participle pounded sand)

(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.
- 1871 January, Everett Chamberlain, “My Christmas at Salt Lake”, in The Lakeside Monthly:
  "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
(idiomatic) To engage in a futile activity.
- 2010, Eric Blehm, The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan, HarperCollins, published 2010, →ISBN, page 44:
  […] Without men on the ground, we'll be pounding sand."
- 2011, Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir:
  He told Shelton we needed to "unleash holy hell." “We're not just going to pound sand,” he added.
(idiomatic, dismissal) To go away; get lost; go to hell.
All you do is complain. Why don't you go pound sand up your ass and stop bothering the line staff.
- 2003 March 15, Christopher Koch, “Showdown at the 6.0 Corral”, in CIO:
  "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."

Quotations

For more quotations using this term, see Citations:pound sand.

Synonyms

(do something futile): get blood from a stone, piss up a rope
(go away): get lost, go fly a kite, take a hike, fuck off