- parsimony, graspingness, avarice. Although it can mean ‘in a state of need’, it is often synonymous with covetousness in Older Scots texts. The Thewis off Gudwomen (c1460) puts them together: Gret couatice and gret nedynes and again the meaning is clear in Dalrymple’s translation of John Leslie’s The Historie of Scotland (1596): He mekle [much] abhorit fra nedines and gredines, vices quhilkes [which] obscuir gretlie nobilitie.
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