This Essential English-Scots Dictionary is published by Dictionaries of the Scots Language SCIO, Scotland’s independent lexicographical body for the Scots language. It provides Scots equivalents for over 4,000 English words and phrases selected from our Concise English-Scots Dictionary and published in our Scots School Dictionary and Essential Scots Dictionary. The content is based entirely on material, largely unchanged, collected over several decades by William Graham, author of The Scots Word Book (1977), and donated to us in the 1990s.
It is important to bear in mind that Scots and English have always shared much – perhaps most – of their vocabulary. So, for example, ‘one, two, three’ is no less Scots than the exclusively (and in some cases hyper-local or dated) Scots forms recorded by Graham.
For a comprehensive Scots-English dictionary, visit our Dictionaries of the Scots Language Online. Information about our other publications is available here.