shoad

English

Alternative forms

• shode

Etymology

From Middle English shode, schode, from Old English ġescēad (“separation, distinction, discretion, understanding, argument, reason, reckoning, account, statement, accuracy, art, manner, method”), from Proto-Germanic *skaidą (“separation, distinction”), from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to cut, divide, separate”). Related to Old English scādan (“to separate, divide, part, make a line of separation between”). More at shed.

Noun

shoad (plural shoads)

1. (mining) Loose fragments (often of metal ore) mixed with earth.
   • 1915, Lionel Clive Ball, The Etheridge Mineral Field, page 37:

     The earliest mining consisted simply in collecting shoads — a means of gaining a livelihood not yet totally discarded.

   • 1968, Australia. Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics, Bulletin - Issue 84, page 203:

     Eluvial wolfram was known from the Mount Carbine area 50 miles northwest from Cairns before 1895, but the black shoads were at first thought to be manganese (hence the name Manganese Creek for the little creek at the village).

   • 1978, Robert Hunt, A Historical Sketch of British Mining, page 63:

     Where the fynding of these affordeth a tempting likelihood, the tynners go to work casting up trenches before them, in depth 5 or 6 foote, more or lesse, as the loose ground went, and 3 or 4 in breadth, gathering up such shoad as this turning of the earth doth offer to their sight.

   • 1986, Roger David Penhallurick, Tin in Antiquity, page 164:

     As mentioned above, many of the important tin streams are well away from any outcropping tin lodes, hence shoad, so Carew oversimplified his account.

   • 2005, Warren Alexander Dym, Divining science, page 143:

     In search of alluvial shoad, the miners studied the landscape, the color and nature of earths, and embedded rocks beside streams and rivers.

   • 2008, Peter C. Herring, Peter Rose, Nicholas Johnson, Bodmin Moor: An Archaeological Survey - Volume 2, page 31:

     Before developing a streamworks, the quality, depth and lateral extent of the shoad would have to be tested through strategically placed excavations.

Verb

shoad (third-person singular simple present shoads, present participle shoading, simple past and past participle shoaded)

1. (mining) To seek for a vein or mineral deposit by following a shode, or tracing them to whence they derived.
   • 1879, William Bailes, Student's Guide to the Principles of Coal & Metal Mining, page 89:

     In shoading it is necessary to distinguish between heavy and light ores, and between friable and hard materials.

   • 1889, Records of the Geological Survey of India, page 41:

     It is manifest from the position of the neck that the great mass of material removed by denudation in forming the hollow in which it is seen exposed, must have been washed down the stream in question, and had diamonds occurred in that mass it is highly improbable that none should have been left in the bed and banks of the stream where their existence would certainly have been discovered by the old diamond seekers in former generations, who would have “shoaded” up the stream and have inevitably reached the neck.

   • 1967, Charles Joseph Singer, A History of Technology - Volume 4, page 67:

     Until about 1875, the ancient methods of prospecting for a deposit whose presence was suspected from evidence such as the above were still in common use. they included shoading, trenching, and hushing.

2. (mining) To be distributed as shoads.
   • 1941, Royal Society of South Australia, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, page 307:

     Among the fragments shoaded down the sloping surface of the ground are pieces of edgewise intraformational conglomerate.

   • 1958, Australian Atomic Energy Commission, Australian Atomic Energy Symposium, 1958, page 44:

     The discovery of davidite at Radium Hill was made in 1906, by Mr. A. J. Smith, who mistook the black shoaded mineral for tin ore.

   • 2013, Arthur John Gaskin, H. R. Samson, Ceramic and Refractory Clays of South Australia, page 7:

     Several outcrops were originally pegged in the hope that the shoaded black mineral would prove to be tin ore.

   • 1911, Sir Douglas Mawson, Walter Howchin, Chiastolites from Bimbowrie, South Australia, page 196:

     They are to be seen projecting in relief from the outcrops and shoaded on the surface.

Anagrams

• dohas, dosha