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

Sea Sed Sem Seq Ser

sederunt

Latin phrase used to indicate:

(1) present in court. The term appears at the start of minutes and is immediately followed by the list of those members attending during the proceedings. It was first used by church courts, law courts, dean of guild courts and town councils of royal burghs sitting as courts. It then became common practice to use this term in minutes of any local authority.

(2) Sederunt books: the records of proceedings in a sequestration and the records of testamentary trusts are called sederunt books

(3) Acts of Sederunt of the Lords of Council and Session are secondary legislation enacted by the Court of Session, generally regulating the law courts