The Essential Scots-English Dictionary provides meanings in English for 9,500 Scots words and phrases.
There are three ways to access the dictionary entries:
- Search: Enter a Scots word into the search box that appears on each page. If your search term exists as a headword in the dictionary, the entry will be returned. You can also use a wildcard search. For example, searching for ab* will return all entries whose headwords begin with ab (capped at 10 entries).
- Full text search: Enter an English or Scots term into the full text search box and you will be returned all entries containing your search term anywhere in the entry (not just as a headword). You may also use a wildcard search here.
- Browse the dictionary: Browse the complete list of dictionary entries here.
Some dictionary entries, like that for hantle, show a single spelling and a single meaning. Other entries are more complicated.
- Some show more than one spelling. For example, the entry for hingmy shows it can also be spelled thingwy or thingmy. We list a word’s most commonly found spellings in order of relative frequency.
- Some words belong to more than one word class. For example, fankle is both a verb and a noun.
- Some show more than one meaning. The entry for saftie, for example, lists four related meanings (numbered 1-4), while the verb wyte has two unrelated meanings: ‘to wait’ (wyte1) and ‘to blame’ (wyte2).
- Where a word, spelling, or meaning is found only or mainly in certain parts of Scotland, this is shown. For example, we identify smad as a regional word; meen as a regional spelling; and ‘rattling’ as a regional meaning of rackle.
Audio guides are provided for around 1,100 words with a tricky or hard-to-guess pronunciation. Click on the symbol to hear the sound.