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”
most often means the form of a complaint made in a civil case, or the grounds of the charge made against the accused in a criminal one; it can be used to mean scandalous statements made in writing about someone but in Scotland this is properly called defamation.
a Scots word used to introduce local names used in documents, or any Scots word or phrase brought into a Latin document.
the same idea as somebody making a will ‘sound in mind’; it was that state of health which would give someone full and undoubted power to arrange for the disposal of his heritable property in the event of his death.
the word commonly used to mean ‘the subject of the Crown’
a right entitling a person (called a ‘liferenter’) to use and enjoy another’s property for life, providing this was done without wasting it; the liferent might be a sum of money paid yearly, or the income from a piece of land.
commonly applied to broke men, sorners, and Borderers and Highlanders in general; it means ‘villains’ or ‘rogues’.
woollen jacket or cardigan; woollen or flannel undershirt.
a measure of dry capacity. Used to give amounts for dry goods, the lippie measure was different for wheat and barley. A quarter of a peck was a lippie (from the Anglo-Saxon leap, meaning a ‘basket’) or forpet. See Dry Capacity for further details.
in Scots law, this is the stage in a legal action when both parties in a case have stated their respective pleas in a court. It is then understood that, by doing so, the parties have consented to abide by the decision of the judge in the case. Litiscontestation is a recognised process in other legal jurisdictions (various American jurisdictions, for example)