Idiom
plow the sands
Meaning
to spend considerable time and effort to do something useless; to waste time
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Trying to fix that broken machine is just plowing the sands.”
“He spent all weekend arguing with the neighbor, but he was only plowing the sands because the man refused to listen.”
“The committee realized that continuing to debate the impossible proposal was merely plowing the sands, so they finally decided to abandon the project entirely.”
Examples
simple
“Trying to fix that broken machine is just plowing the sands.”
contextual
“He spent all weekend arguing with the neighbor, but he was only plowing the sands because the man refused to listen.”
complex
“The committee realized that continuing to debate the impossible proposal was merely plowing the sands, so they finally decided to abandon the project entirely.”
Key words
Related idioms
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