Word.ws English Dictionary

rope of sand

rope of sand noun: something incohesive, flimsy, disconnected or unreliable.

Noun

rope of sand (plural ropes of sand)

  1. (idiomatic) Something incohesive, flimsy, disconnected or unreliable
    • If any flaw can be detected in this reasoning, its author will be the first to admit that these Institutes are, from beginning to end, a mere rope of sand; but if no flaw can be detected in it, he begs to crave for them the acknowledgment that they are a chain of adamant.1875, James Frederick Ferrier, The Institutes of Metaphysic, Section 2 Proposition 5
    • Out of his ideas he may weave cunning theories, beautiful ideals; but he is working with ropes of sand. At the slightest stress, the last least bit of cohesion flits away, and each idea flies apart from its fellows, while all clamor that he do this thing, or think this thing, in the ancient and...July 1900, Jack London, “The Dignity of Dollars”, in Overland Monthly, volume 36, number 211, pages 53–57

Forms of rope of sand

pluralropes of sand

Questions about rope of sand

What does rope of sand mean?
Rope of sand means something incohesive, flimsy, disconnected or unreliable.
What part of speech is rope of sand?
Rope of sand is a noun.
What is the plural of rope of sand?
The plural of rope of sand is ropes of sand.

Words near rope of sand in the dictionary

  1. rope ladders
  2. rope line
  3. rope lines
  4. rope machine
  5. rope machines
  6. rope of sand
  7. rope off
  8. rope out
  9. rope porter
  10. rope porters
  11. rope pulling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rope of sand (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “rope of sand.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rope_of_sand. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.