The Your Scottish Archives Glossary defines archaic words and phrases, mostly Scots law terminology, commonly found in documents and records in Scotland’s archives. If you think a word or phrase should be added to the glossary, or an existing entry could be defined better, please contact us at your@scottisharchives.org.uk.
You can also use the Dictionary of the Scots Language as a further resource at https://dsl.ac.uk/ for Scots words and phrases (including legal terminology).
To find a term within the glossary, click on the initial letter of the word you are looking for, then select the relevant syllable segment displayed below.
Example: to find the term “roup” select section “R” then sub-section “Ro”
legal term indicating a person who is appointed to act for someone else who cannot manage his own affairs, usually due to age or incapacity resulting from mental ill-health (not to be confused with a museum curator or curator of an exhibition)
Scots term literally meaning a single grain of corn, but usually appearing as ‘the third curn’ or with another number, indicating a proportion of the crop; small number of quantity, a few.
records used by an organisation for day to day business. These should be appraised for continuing value to the organisation and included in a retention and disposal schedule.
a courtyard, or some other piece of ground lying near or belonging to an occupied building.