Sands

How to spell sands

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sands

What does sands mean?

1. nounStretches or expanses of sand, or the grains of sand themselves.

Sands in a sentence

• The children built castles on the golden sands near the pier.

• The desert sands shifted constantly in the strong wind.

Where does sands come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of 'sand', which comes from the Old English 'sand', meaning the gritty, granular material found on beaches and in deserts. The word has close cousins across the Germanic family, including the Dutch 'zand' and the German 'Sand', all tracing back to a shared Proto-Germanic root. Scholars often link that root further back to an ancient Indo-European base meaning 'to grind' or 'to crush', which fits well with sand being rock worn down into tiny grains. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years, and the plural 'sands' has long been used for broad sandy stretches as well as for the trickling grains in an hourglass that measure passing time. Because the word is short and follows a regular pattern, the only thing to watch is simply adding the plain -s.

How the word is built

• sand (loose granular rock)
• -s (plural suffix)