sand

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   rub with sandpaper

   sandpaper the wooden surface

2. 2
   noun

   Rock that is ground more finely than gravel, but is not as fine as silt (more formally, see grain sizes chart), forming beaches and deserts and also used in construction.

   For a spell we done pretty well. Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand.

3. 3
   noun

   Personal courage.

   You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand.

4. 4
   noun

   A single grain of sand.

   One sand another. Not more resembles that sweet rosy lad

5. 5
   noun

   A moment or interval of time; the term or extent of one's life (referring to the sand in an hourglass).

   The sands are numbered that make up my life.

6. 6
   noun

   Dried mucus in the eye's inner corner, perhaps left from sleep (sleepy sand).

   Sleep in your eyes, sleep crust, sand, eye gunk—whatever you call it, we all get it—that crusty stuff in the corners of your eyes when you wake up in the morning. "The medical term is 'rheum,' though you rarely hear it used," […]

7. 7
   verb

   To cover with sand.

   Sudden stopping, which could be effected easily by sanding the rails and reversing the driving-gear, was dangerous, because the train might telescope and overwhelm the engine.

8. 8
   verb

   To blot ink using sand.

   The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words "In secret."

Etymology

From Middle English sond, sand, from Old English sand, from Proto-West Germanic *samd, from Proto-Germanic *samdaz. See also North Frisian sun, Sön, sönj (“sand”), Saterland Frisian Sound (“sand”), West Frisian sân (“sand”), Dutch zand (“sand”), German, Luxembourgish Sand (“sand”), Yiddish זאַמד (zamd, “sand”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish sand (“sand”), Faroese and Icelandic sandur (“sand”), Latin sabulum (“sand, gravel”), Ancient Greek ἄμαθος (ámathos, “sand”), English dialectal samel (“sand bottom”), Old Irish do·essim (“to pour out”), Latin sentina (“bilge water”…