sand

(sănd)

a. Small loose grains of worn or disintegrated rock.

b. Geology A sedimentary material, finer than a granule and coarser than silt, with grains between 0.06 and 2.0 millimeters in diameter.

2. often sands A tract of land covered with sand, as a beach or desert.

a. The loose, granular, gritty particles in an hourglass.

b. sands Moments of allotted time or duration: "The sands are numb'red that makes up my life" (Shakespeare).

4. Slang Courage; stamina; perseverance: "She had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand" (Mark Twain).

5. A light grayish brown to yellowish gray.

tr.v. sand·ed, sand·ing, sands

1. To sprinkle or cover with or as if with sand.

2. To polish or scrape with sand or sandpaper.

3. To mix with sand.

4. To fill up (a harbor) with sand.

[Middle English, from Old English.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

sands

(ˈsændz)

pl n

(Physical Geography) an extensive area of sand, esp at a seashore or in a desert

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

sands - the region of the shore of a lake or sea or ocean

litoral, littoral, littoral zone

coast, seacoast, sea-coast, seashore - the shore of a sea or ocean

Translations

Sand

spiaggia

sands

[sændz] npl → spiaggia fsg
the sands of time (fig) → lo scorrere del tempo

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

"At the sands, of course!" says Nancy, with a toss of her head.

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For the Deadly Sands will Turn Any Living Flesh to Dust in an instant.

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I awoke early on the third morning after my return from Ashby Park--the sun was shining through the blind, and I thought how pleasant it would be to pass through the quiet town and take a solitary ramble on the sands while half the world was in bed.

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The yellow hen flew to the sands at once, but Dorothy had to climb over the high slats.

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It was a fruitless search, however, in so far as antelope is concerned; but one night as I lay courting sleep at the edge of a little cluster of date-palms that surround an ancient well in the midst of the arid, shifting sands, I suddenly became conscious of a strange sound coming apparently from the earth beneath my head.

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"One summer afternoon, when I had promised to go shrimping along the sands with Philip, I was waiting rather impatiently in the front drawing-room, watching Arthur handle some packets of coins he had just purchased and slowly shunt them, one or two at a time, into his own dark study and museum which was at the back of the house.

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Here he was interrupted by a loud report, and a cannonball came tearing through the trees and pitched in the sand not a hundred yards from where we two were talking.

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The tide was half out, and they sailed squarely in on the sand, grounding in a row, with the salmon boat in the middle.

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Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits.

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At length the feeding-supply of water gave out; the cylinder was extinguished for lack of gas; the Buntzen battery ceased to work, and the balloon, shrinking together, gently descended to the sand, in the very place that the car had hollowed out there.

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The tubes, as I have already remarked, enter the sand nearly in a vertical direction.

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Accordingly, the directors of that institution consulted many persons who were supposed to know what steps should be taken, and it was finally decided that the best protection against fire--which is what was feared--was not water but sand. To carry the scheme into practice great store of fine sea- sand--the kind that blows about and is used to fill hour-glasses-- was provided throughout the building, especially at the points liable to attack, from which it could be brought into use.

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