[Ads-l] on a screed

[Dan Goncharoff]

It is like the lyric from "My Fair Justice":

"No it's just on the screed when you rave..."

On Thu, Oct 4, 2018, 3:01 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> > On Oct 4, 2018, at 2:33 PM, Mark Mandel <mark.a.mandel at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > FWIW, I've always associated "screed" with a written text, possibly by
> > association with "script" and "scroll".
> >
> > Mark Mandel
>
> It’s evidently a cognate of “shred”. Most OED entries do specify writing,
> but not all.  The most general relevant lemma is
>
> 3a. A long or tedious speech, piece of writing, list, etc. Now chiefly: a
> speech or piece of writing characterized by vehement or protracted
> criticism or complaint; a rant, a tirade.
>
> —which seems basically on target. Curiously, AHD just commits itself to a
> screed being ‘a long monotonous speech or piece of writing’, missing the
> 'vehement or protracted criticism or complaint’ component that we’ve been
> assuming is associated with (most?) screeds.  After all, based on my long
> experience as a member of the Yale faculty, I would venture to maintain
> that a speech can be long and monotonous without being a screed.
>
> LH
>
> > On Thu, Oct 4, 2018, 2:01 PM Clai Rice <cxr1086 at louisiana.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> 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."
> >>>
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> >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>
> >>
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> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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>

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