Word of the Day for Thursday, February 9, 2012
screed \skreed\, noun:
1. A long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe.
2. An informal letter, account, or other piece of writing.
3. Building Trades. A. A strip of plaster or wood applied to a surface to be plastered to serve as a guide for making a true surface. B. A wooden strip serving as a guide for making a true level surface on a concrete pavement or the like. C. A board or metal strip dragged across a freshly poured concrete slab to give it its proper level.
4. British Dialect. A fragment or shred, as of cloth.
5. Scot.
A. A tear or rip, especially in cloth.
B. A drinking bout.
verb:
1. Scot. To tear, rip, or shred, as cloth.
By the time this screed gets to you the drafts may have come, but as I've heard nothing yet and been writing for two months now, you'd better have a look anyway. Will you please?
-- Ernest Hemingway, "Selected Letters"
I bet I could turn out a rattling good screed. Why, last year I almost got the prize. I sent in fearfully hot stuff.
-- P. G. Wodehouse, "The Prefect's Uncle"
Screed is related to the Old English word for shred. Its alternate sense of a long speech was first recorded in 1789 and may be related to the sense of the word meaning a long lists of names.
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