sand

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Small loose grains of worn or disintegrated rock.
• noun Geology A sedimentary material, finer than a granule and coarser than silt, with grains between 0.06 and 2.0 millimeters in diameter.
• noun A tract of land covered with sand, as a beach or desert.
• noun The loose, granular, gritty particles in an hourglass.
• noun Moments of allotted time or duration.
• noun Slang Courage; stamina; perseverance.
• noun A light grayish brown to yellowish gray.
• transitive verb To sprinkle or cover with or as if with sand.
• transitive verb To polish or scrape with sand or sandpaper.
• transitive verb To mix with sand.
• transitive verb To fill up (a harbor) with sand.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To sprinkle with sand; specifically, to powder with sand, as a freshly painted surface in order to make it resemble stone, or fresh writing to keep it from blotting.
• To add sand to: as, to sand sugar.
• To drive upon a sand-bank.
• noun A message; a mission; an embassy.
• noun Water-worn detritus, finer than that to which the name gravel would ordinarily be applied: but the line between sand and gravel cannot be distinctly drawn, and they frequently occur intermingled.
• noun A tract or region composed principally of sand, like the deserts of Arabia; or a tract of sand exposed by the ebb of the tide: as, the Libyan Sands; the Solway sands.
• noun Any mass of small hard particles: as, the sand of an hour-glass; sand used in blotting.
• noun In founding, a mixture of sand, clay, and other materials used in making molds for casting metals.
• noun Sandstone: so used in the Pennsylvania petroleum region, where the various beds of petroliferous sandstone are called oil-sands, and designated as first, second, third, etc., in the order in which they are struck in the borings. Similarly, the gas-bearing sandstones are called gas-sands.
• noun plural The moments, minutes, or small portions of time; lifetime; allotted period of life: in allusion to the sand in the hour-glass used for measuring time.
• noun Force of character; stamina; grit; endurance; pluck.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To sprinkle or cover with sand.
• transitive verb obsolete To drive upon the sand.
• transitive verb To bury (oysters) beneath drifting sand or mud.
• transitive verb colloq. To mix with sand for purposes of fraud.
• noun Fine particles of stone, esp. of siliceous stone, but not reduced to dust; comminuted stone in the form of loose grains, which are not coherent when wet.
• noun rare A single particle of such stone.
• noun The sand in the hourglass; hence, a moment or interval of time; the term or extent of one's life.
• noun Tracts of land consisting of sand, like the deserts of Arabia and Africa; also, extensive tracts of sand exposed by the ebb of the tide.
• noun Slang Courage; pluck; grit.
• noun (Zoöl.) the Japanese badger (Meles ankuma).
• noun A long bag filled with sand, used as a club by assassins.
• noun soap mixed with sand, made into a ball for use at the toilet.
• noun (Chem.) A bath in which the body is immersed in hot sand.
• noun a thick layer of sand, whether deposited naturally or artificially; specifically, a thick layer of sand into which molten metal is run in casting, or from a reducing furnace.
• noun (Zoöl.) a collective name for numerous species of limicoline birds, such as the sandpipers, plovers, tattlers, and many others; -- called also shore birds.
• noun a process of engraving and cutting glass and other hard substances by driving sand against them by a steam jet or otherwise; also, the apparatus used in the process.
• noun A box carried on locomotives, from which sand runs on the rails in front of the driving wheel, to prevent slipping.
• noun (Bot.) a tropical American tree (Hura crepitans). Its fruit is a depressed many-celled woody capsule which, when completely dry, bursts with a loud report and scatters the seeds. See Illust. of Regma.
• noun (Zoöl.) an American anomuran crustacean (Hippa talpoidea) which burrows in sandy seabeaches. It is often used as bait by fishermen. See Illust. under Anomura.
• noun (Zoöl.) a tubular vessel having a calcareous coating, and connecting the oral ambulacral ring with the madreporic tubercle. It appears to be excretory in function.
• noun (Zoöl.), [Prov. Eng.] the redshank.
• noun (Zoöl.) Same as Sand saucer, below.
• noun (Zoöl.) A land crab, or ocypodian.
• noun (Far.) a crack extending downward from the coronet, in the wall of a horse's hoof, which often causes lameness.
• noun (Zoöl.) any one of several species of large terrestrial crickets of the genus Stenophelmatus and allied genera, native of the sandy plains of the Western United States.
• noun (Zoöl.) any ophidioid fish. See Illust. under Ophidioid.