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                  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

                  quarter day

                  Candlemas, Lammas, Martinmas and Whitsunday, the days on which bills were settled. These arose out of the Church calendar of feast days. See also term days.

                  Quarter Seal

                  the quarter seal was used for more routine royal administrative documents and warrants for the use of the Great Seal, in fact for much the same purposes as the privy seal had been originally used; it was the top half of the Great Seal. One of four royal seals: see also Great Seal, Privy Seal, Signet.