Broadside

 WORD OF THE DAY

broadside / noun / BRAWD-syde

Definition
1a: a sizable sheet of paper printed on one side
1b: a sheet printed on one or both sides and folded
1c: something (such as a ballad) printed on a broadside
2 (archaic): the side of a ship above the waterline
3a: all the guns on one side of a ship
3b: a volley of abuse or denunciation
4: a broad or unbroken surface
5a: with the side forward or toward a given point
5b: sideways
5c: directly from the side
6: in one volley
7: at random

Examples
“Mr. Taruskin had a no-holds-barred approach to intellectual combat. ... Following a 1991 broadside by Mr. Taruskin contending that Sergei Prokofiev had composed Stalinist propaganda, one biographer complained of his ‘sneering antipathy.’”
— William Robin, The New York Times, 1 July 2022

In his broadside, Mr. Biden is maligning half the country and the 70 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump.
— The Editorial Board, WSJ, 2 Sep. 2022

Did You Know?
Nautical language is both fascinating and fun, what with its jibbooms and spirketing, its scuppers and poop decks.
 As these four terms demonstrate, not all ship-related words sail over to landlubber vocabulary, but broadside is one that has. It originally referred to the side of a ship above the water, then later to the guns arrayed along that side.
The further use of broadside to refer to the firing of all those guns at once eventually led to the figurative “volley of abuse” sense—a strongly worded attack intended to shiver one’s timbers.
The printing-related uses of broadside, referring originally to sheets of paper, and then to matter printed on such paper, arose independently.