sandman

Meanings

1. A figure that brings sleep and dreams by sprinkling magical sand into people's eyes.
2. Used as a symbol of the passage of time toward death.
3. A seller of sand.

1. A surname.
2. Alternative letter-case form of sandman (“folkloric figure sprinkling sand into eyes”).

Etymology

From sand + -man. The mythological sense may be from German Sandmann, Sandmännchen, as it is apparently first attested in English in the context of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novella The Sandman (1816). The German is attested in the relevant sense since at least the mid-18th century.