SCREED: a long discourse or essay, esp. a diatribe. (Dictionary.com)

I’ve never been known for brevity. Over my former career and into my writing career I hear it all the time: “You need to cut it down. Embrace brevity.” I know they are right, but I just enjoy writing so much that I get carried away. The next thing you know, a comment has morphed into an essay, or…a screed. I am told that the word comes from Middle English and is related to the word shred, as “to shred into fragments.”

That seems odd to me, as a diatribe is a long, angry essay. Shredding into fabrics indicates the act of making something, like a piece of fabric, smaller. But I think the key is in the word “diatribe.” A screed is something that shreds a topic, like a diatribe tends to do.

My first exposure to the word screed came in an essay by Robert L. Borosage in The Huffington Post.(“Size Matters… especially when it comes to Jobs”) He was saying that he suspects the report of the President on his jobs proposal will “elicit screeds about deficit spending” from his critics. I thought it was a misprint, but was delighted to find the word in Dictionary.com. It speaks the meaning of the word (Ononmotopoeia), not requiring a written explanation.

The President gets a lot of screeds these days, so I suspect he is becoming immune to the malicious tone of many of them. But I’ll bet the writers have never said to themselves, “I think I’ll sit down and write a screed to President Obama.” It takes an observer like Borosage to come up with the word.

Finding this word has been a reminder to me to temper my enthusiasm and write fewer words in each posting. I’ll try, but it’s like putting a case of beer in front of a practicing alcoholic. You can be sure the whole case will be emptied. The drive to continue drinking can’t be curbed. That’s part of the disease. I need a governor on my laptop which will flash a warning to me when I reach that “long” spot and am approaching the point where screed cuts in.