Scottish National Dictionary
The Scottish National Dictionary (SND) was published in ten volumes (and 4,120 pages) between 1931 and 1976. It was first published online in 2004 with a further supplement added in 2005, bringing the total number of entries to c.30,000, including c.172,000 illustrative quotations.
All of SND’s content is now available as part of DSL Online.
Designed partly on regional lines and partly on historical principles, SND deals with Scots words known to be in use or to have been in use since c.1700, including:
- Those that are uniquely or characteristically Scots, e.g. wean;
- Those that have found their way into Standard English, e.g. cosy;
- Those with the same meaning but different spelling in Standard English, e.g. groose;
- Those with the same spelling but different meaning in Standard English, e.g. message;
- Those acquired since c.1700 from other languages, especially Gaelic words in areas on or near the western limit of Scots, e.g. slainte and words used by Scottish Traveller communities in the Scottish Border areas, e.g. gadgie;
- Legal, theological or ecclesiastical terms, e.g. avizandum, action sermon.
It should be noted, however, that the majority of words in present day Scots are identical in both form and meaning to their English counterparts. These words are not included in SND – not because they are not Scots, but rather due to a practical decision to save space in the dictionary’s original print volumes by omitting material that already exists in English dictionaries.
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