Slang: to raise sand (antedating 1887)

[Wilson Gray]

I agree, except that, for me, the phrase is not slang any more than
"Good morning!" is.

I'm tippin' in
Please don't make no noise
I'm tippin' in
I been ballin' with the boys
My mother, my mother
Boy, she'll understand
But my wife
Will raise all kinds of sand

R&B song by The Spiders from the early '50's

_All kinds of_ is an intensifying phrase that can be tossed in
wherever the standard would use _a lot of_.

That song kicks all *kinds* of ass!

The singer gon' make all *kinds* of bread!

Hence, "raise all kinds of sand" is non-distinct from simple "raise sand."

OED? Isn't that the dictionary whose definition of _pimp_ leaves one
with the impression that a pimp is simply a kindly gentlemanman who
gives of himself to make the lives of prostitutes as pleasant as
possible?

-Wilson

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Slang: to raise sand (antedating 1887)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>>
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>>
>
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>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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