Origin: "pound sand"?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This phrase has always bothered me and every time I look up etymologies, I find it’s in that tiresome class where three or four obvious folk-ety’s cloud the issue.

You tell someone to “go pound sand.” You have just told them to:

[ol]
[li]Walk away (as in, steps pound the sand down).[/li][li]Shove sand or salt up their ass.[/li][li]Go pack sand down rat holes, a traditionally menial job.[/li][li]Just go pound sand with a shovel, a useless effort.[/li][/ol]
I’ve always understood it as #1. #2 is a popular explanation but seems to have come out of nowhere in vulgar recent times. #3 is an oft-repeated but unsubstantiated explanation, as is #4.
You?

2

Per OED.com “a. to pound sand : to engage in a pointless, menial task. Usu. as a command, expressing dismissal or contempt.”

3

I first ran into it in the 70s, from a couple of friends who had been in the military. I think I first heard it as something like “I told him he can pound sand”, and when I asked WTF that meant, he said “pound sand up his ass.” That’s my hazy recollection.

4

Actual link Oxford English Dictionary

5

I always thought it meant “get lost”, or “take a hike”. A contemptuous dismissal, but nothing vulgar.

6

I thought it meant “just make a bunch of noise in a useless, meaningless effort”

7

Since the OP is evidently looking for personal interpretations of the phrase, let’s move this to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

8

I’ve never thought of the phrase in terms of the first interpretation. It seems more dismissive than just telling someone to walk away.

I have heard people actually say, “go pound sand down a rat hole.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say “go pound sand up your ass.”

Since interpretation #2 is an activity that is actually done, I’d go with that one.

9

I’ve always understood the phrase to be a suggestion to pound sand up your ass, used when you might tell otherwise someone to go fuck himself.

All of the other variations, like “down a rat hole,” seem to me to be cleaned up versions of “up your ass.”

10

Huh. I always thought it was that sand is post-pounded rock. There’s nothing there to pound. It’s like telling someone to go burn water. Impossible but presumably they’re too dumb to know better.

11

I’d always thought it was #4, as in, “You can go pound sand for all the good it’ll do ya.”

12

Now that this is in IMHO, I’d always assumed it meant “go fornicate with ground which is primarily composed of sand.” Not sure why I thought that, seeing other peoples’ definitions makes me think I’m way wrong.

Do people actually pound sand into rat holes? Do rats even live in holes? This can’t be a thing.

Previous thread on the subject.

13

That’s what I’ve always understood it to mean.

14

I can confirm that rats do live in holes. My neighbor has chickens and a dog. We have no dog. Thus, the rats that eat his chicken feed live in my yard. Those guys dig like there’s no tomorrow. (I have even heard unconfirmed stories from other neighbors that rats can do so much digging that they can undermine a house’s foundation.) It takes a steady effort to continually poison them, but we also fill in the holes, so that any new rats won’t discover pre-made holes just waiting for them to move into.

So… I can actually say that this version of the saying makes some sense, though it’s never the sense in which I’ve interpreted it.

I always thought it referred to military forces marching through the desert (closest to the OPs #1 interpretation). In my understanding, it’s not just “walk away” but also the ideas that a) walking on sand is very tiring b) sand is in deserts and deserts are miserable c) lots of military forces have been killed by deserts (dehydration, etc.) and d) it’s probably pointless to conquer a desert anyway.

The idea of pounding sand up your ass just makes no sense to me… but I suppose that doesn’t rule out that possible origination.

15

Fascinating! How do you go about filling the holes and does it involve sand and/or pounding?

16

Having been in the Army for a good many years, it was most definitely used to tell someone to Pound Sand Up Their Ass. No idea where we got it from and no idea it was ever used any other way.

17

[And we have this from the 26 December 1877 Globe of Atchison, Kansas:

We don’t know whether the young man you refer to knows enough to pound sand or not.](http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/pound_sand/)
18

It has always implied when said in these parts #2… possibly with the addition of “No…? Well then, go grab your socks and I’ll get you started.”

Its always been said by the extremely rude & crude.

19

That’s very interesting. If it was published in a newspaper in 1877, it’s unlikely it was understood to be a highly vulgar expression.

20

Mostly I just take the dirt they dug out and shove as much back into the hole as I can. Then I stomp on it a few times to compact it. You could call that pounding. Up in my neighborhood (a little north of Seattle) it’s certainly not sand.