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

Ta Te Th Ti To Tr Tu

Tei Tem Ten Ter Tes Tet

testament

a written deed appointing an executor to administer a person’s moveable property after his death. If this is done by the person making the testament during his life-time, it is called a testament testamentar, if the person died without making a testament a court would appoint the executor, and the deed by which this was done was a testament dative. Testaments did not necessarily include a will. Until 1868 wills and testaments had no bearing on the disposal or administration of any heritable property the deceased might have had, and for that reason people with heritable property generally set up a trust disposition and settlement. For more detail see the Knowledge Base entry on Wills and Testaments

testament-dative

a written deed appointing an executor-dative, i.e. an executor appointed by the Commissary Court.

testament-testamentar

a written deed appointing an executor-nominate, i.e. an executor nominated by the deceased through a will or other testamentary writing.