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”
an action brought when someone has property which is being claimed by several others, for instance a debtor owing money to several creditors; the debtor can then raise an action of multiple poinding with the aim of having it discerned that the debtor is only liable to make one single payment.
a quantity of grain due to be paid to the owner or tenant of the mill in return for having corn ground, payable by everybody making use of the mill. People who used the mill voluntarily (e.g. because it was the nearest mill) were its ‘out-sucken multurers’. People who were bound (astricted) to use that mill were its ‘insucken multurers’. See also astriction, sequels, sucken, thirlage.