[Ads-l] on a screed

[Clai Rice]

Searching in COCA I find 163 hits for screed, about 15-20% being OED screed (4) in construction contexts.

There are no relevant uses with "on (a screed)", and only 4 with "into (a screed)", 2 verbs each with two examples: launches into and turned X into. 

Approaching from the other side, "GO off on" yields 624 examples. Searching for right-side noun collocates I find 70 nouns with 2 or more hits, though several of those are of the same lemma. The top collocates are TANGENT (55), trip (14), vacation (8). Nouns in the semantic set of interest are RANT (9), tirade (5), RIFF (3), rampage (2). On the whole, the nouns in the whole collocation set are characterized by being associated with a length of time--tangent being a sort of outlier. In addition to those listed, the set includes adventure, tour, missions, honeymoon, trips, crusade and fishing expeditions. Since the definition of screed includes the notion of length ("long or tedious" "protracted" in OED), it seems to me that the noun would fit the general construction. Yet it does not appear.

The construction "GO on" has too much reach to search effectively--over 22,000 hits with right-side nouns of over 16 hits each--so I searched "GO on a". The most frequent nouns to appear are  
1                TRIP 	413 	
2 		 DATE 	241 	
3 		 RAMPAGE 	166 	
4 		 SPREE 	159 	
5 		 DIET 	159 

In our target semantic set are tear (33), tirade (13), rant (13), tangent (4), riff (2), diatribe (2).

I have not searched the historical corpus. 

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 3, 2018 10:43:36 AM
> Subject: on a screed
> 
> CNN:  "[Judge K] went on a long screed."
>  
> Sounds weird to me, despite OED def. as "tirade"
> 
> Traditionally you don't (or didn't) "go on" a "screed" (though you do go a
> "spree," like, you know, consuming mass quantities of beer.)
> 
> JL
> 
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org