inkshed

English

Etymology

Blend of ink +‎ bloodshed.

Noun

inkshed (uncountable)

1. The writing of polemical letters or articles.
   • 1850, Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets‎^[1]:

     By our electioneerings and Hansard Debatings, and ever-enduring tempest of jargon that goes on everywhere, we manage to settle that; to have it declared, with no bloodshed except insignificant blood from the nose in hustings-time, but with immense beershed and inkshed and explosion of nonsense, which darkens all the air, that the Right Honorable Zero is to be the man.

   • 1914, Samuel F. B. Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals‎^[2]:

     Europeans can hardly understand this truly anomalous phase of our American institutions; they do not understand that it is characteristic that 'we speak daggers but use none'; that we fight with ballots and not with bullets; that we have abundance of inkshed and little bloodshed, and that all that is explosive is blown off through newspaper safety-valves."

   • 1976, George Griffith, The Mummy and Miss Nitocris‎^[3]:

     He smiled gravely as he thought of the inkshed that would come to pass in a combat a l'outrance between the Three Dimensionists and the Four Dimensionists, and how the distinguished scientists on each side would hurl their ponderous thunderbolts of wisdom against each other.