Your Scottish Archives Glossary

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”

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

Pa Pe Pi Pl Po Pr Pu

Poi Por Pos Pou

poinding, poynding

a diligence (enforced by letter under the signet called ‘letters of poinding’) whereby ownership of a debtor’s moveable property is transferred to his creditor. ‘Real poinding’ or ‘poinding of the ground’ is the poinding of goods lying on lands which are a security for the debt; ‘personal poinding’ is the poinding of moveable property which is then sold at auction (or ‘made penny of’ in the usual phrase) the proceeds of which are used to pay the debt. If there is more than one creditor, there may be an action of multiple poinding raised by the debtor. Pronounced ‘pinding’.

portioner

a proprietor who held only a small piece of land; heirs portioners were women who succeeded jointly to property.

post nuptial

after marriage.

pound

basic unit of Scots weight (from the Latin pondo, ‘by weight’, or pondus, meaning a ‘weight on a scale’), which equated roughly with the Roman weight, libra, hence the abbreviation of ‘lb.’ See also Weights.

poundland

a piece of land which would have been originally valued at one pound in the extent; generally taken as 4 oxgangs or half a ploughgate.