screed \skreed, noun: 1. A long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe. verb: 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.
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.
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 LettersI 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
