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

Sa Sc Se Sh Si Sl So Sp St Su Sy

sasine

either the symbolic act of giving legal possession of a piece of heritable property, or the instrument by which such an act was proved to have happened. The origin of the term is the same as that for the word ‘seize’ – meaning to take possession of (in Scottish documents it is generally rendered ‘seis’). Hence, for example in an abridgement of sasine, someone who became the owner of a property (by succession, gift, purchase or whatever) is recorded as being ‘seised’ of that property. See symbols.