Slang: to raise sand (antedating 1887)

[Garson O'Toole]

The OED (1989) has "to raise sand" with a first cite in 1892.

sand, n. 7. c. to raise sand  (U.S.): to create a disturbance; to make a fuss.

1892 Dialect Notes I. 231 ‘To raise sand’ is slang [in Kentucky] for
to get furiously angry, the same as ‘to raise Cain’.
1893 H. A. SHANDS Some Peculiarities of Speech in Mississippi 74 Raise
sand,..to create a disturbance, to raise a row.

Here is an 1887 site in which an employee is late for work and
believes that his "boss will raise sand".

Cite: 1887 (GBooks says1885), Ptocowak: A Strange, Sad Story of
Fifteen Years in Dixie by S. L. Harmon, Page 178, Publishing House of
John P. Smith, Rochester, New York.

"The boss will raise sand when I get in this morning," said Charley
Butler, as he walked briskly down the streets of Batesville, toward
the Panola Ginshop, where he, with many others, had for a long time
been employed in the manufacture of cotton gins.
The whistle had sounded fully an hour before, and when he reached the
shop the ponderous machinery was in motion, roaring and humming like a
mammoth thing of life.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Munuby8Fn8YC&q=%22raise+sand%22#v=snippet&

Internal evidence suggests the text was written by 1885. The copyright
notice says 1885 and there is a note:
[The author, S. L. Harmon, died Oct. 29 1885, leaving the manuscript
of this, his first effort at authorship, and it has been published by
the aid of friends, and the exertions of his devoted sister,
                   Cora Lek Harmon, of Batesville, Miss.]

Garson

Wilson Gray wrote:
>>... I noticed in passing that someone had
>>posted to the UD the Southern
>>-and-everywhere-else-that-black-people-live regionalism, _raise sand_,
>>as a slang phrase! It was used by my grandparents, the eldest of whom
>>was born in 1864. I'm not trying even to suggest a date for the
>>phrase. It just that, when I was a child, *really* old, choich-goin'
>>peoples - gnome sane? - allowed the phrase to fall trippingly from the
>>tongue.
>>
>>The poster defined the phrase as "throw a hissy-fit." IME, anything
>>from the crying of a colicky baby to spousal abuse can be referred to
>>as "raising sand."

 Laurence Horn wrote
> Interesting.  There's a very nice country blues kinda album (yes, I
> still call them that) by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant (the latter
> having been the lead singer of Led Zeppelin) called "Raising Sand".
> I never understood the title, which doesn't correspond to any of the
> songs thereon.  Now I know.  Or at least I know it doesn't relate
> directly to either pitching a tent or going commando.
>
> (I'm not where I have access to the relevant volumes of DARE, which
> may have entries for "raising sand" under R- or S-.)
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org