Word of the Week Wednesday: Screed

If this is your one chance to learn something new today, I hope you didn't already know what this word meant because I sure as heck didn't. Here's a good one to help you along on your "Words With Friends" game.

screed\ skreed \ , noun, verb;



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.
 
Quotes:



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


Origin:


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.

Did you enjoy expanding your vocabulary today, kids? I did!

-Kaci