screed
/skɹid/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.32 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A piece of writing (such as an article, letter, or list) or a speech, especially if long.
noun
Chiefly in the plural form screeds: a large quantity.
noun
Senses relating to building construction and masonry.
noun
Senses relating to building construction and masonry.
noun
Senses relating to building construction and masonry.
Example Sentences
- "Eh, Mr Henry! but the carle gae him a screed o' doctrine! Ye might hae heard him a mile down the wind—He routed like a cow in a fremd loaning."
- "I see it's three o'clock in the morning and I've written whole screeds when I only intended to write a short note!"
- "When he [Herman Melville] had finished the first part of his novel [Pierre; or, The Ambiguities], and printed it, the publishers would have nothing to do with it. They claimed they had been deluded into accepting a villainous and blasphemous screed against religion and morality and all right living."
- "One of our primary tasks is to replace racist screeds like The Bell Curve and The End of Racism with sound economic arguments that are relatively simple to understand and yet serious enough to encompass divergent points of view."
- "[...] Physician Josiah Nott, M.D., and George R. Gliddon produced an equally popular screed entitled Types of Mankind. In it, they claimed that blacks' physical and mental differences signaled their polygenic origins and proved black inferiority."
- "One of the more regular correspondents to the club was an Everton fan, who'd send in an abusive screed each time Albion were due to play on Merseyside. He directed this at [Ron] Atkinson, urging him not to select his "monkeys" for the game."
Etymology
From Middle English screde [and other forms], a variant of shrede (“fragment, scrap; strip of cloth; strip cut off from a larger piece; band or thread woven into fabric; element, streak”) (whence shred (noun)), from Old English sċrēad, sċrēade (“a piece cut off; paring, shred”), from Proto-Germanic *skraudō (“a piece, shred; a cut, crack”), from *skraudaną (“to cut up, shred”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off”). The English word is cognate with Old Frisian skrēd. Doublet of escrow, scroll, and shred.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /skɹid/
- British English: /skɹiːd/