Exhaustive List of Scots Language dictionaries

Because some people think they don't exist

One of the less common tropes among the anti-Scots Language people on Twitter is the perceived lack of a Scots language dictionary. This is easy to disprove with a quick link to the dsl.ac.uk website.

However there are many Scots dictionaries, it might be useful to assess the length and breadth of Scots language dictionaries in one place.

First we must consider Dr John Jamieson's "Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language" first published in 1808. It is incredibly comprehensive.

There was a revised edition of Jamieson’s Dictionary published in 1879, with additions from John Longmuir and David Donaldson.

Although we may also note Boswell's Dictionary of the Scots Language from the 1760's. Boswell was the chap who wrote the biography of Samuel Johnson who wrote the English dictionary. He started work on the Scots dictionary but it was never published. There is an on-going effort to bring his earlier work to light

Shortly after Jamieson’s dictionary there was Ebenezer Picken's "A dictionary of the Scottish language; containing an explanation of the words used by the most celebrated and modern Scottish authors" first published in 1818 with a third edition in 1826.

Charles MacKay's "A dictionary of lowland Scotch with an introductory chapter on the poetry, humour, and literary history of the Scottish language and an appendix of Scottish proverbs" published 1888

In 1897 there was John G. Ingram's "A dictionary of the Scottish language" although this is somewhat murkily a reprint of Cleishbotham the Younger’s “A Guid Scots Dictionary” from 1858. This dictionary seems to have been re-printed many times over a 130 year period, 1902, 1975, 1980, 1984, 1987, most recently as “The Auld Scots Tongue” in 1990. Cleishbotham is a meta fictional character, supposedly Sir Walter Scott’s editor. Sir Walter Scott died in 1832, 26 years before the first Cleishbotham dictionary was published. Was it an unauthorised tie-in to Scott’s novels, that has somehow become a serious Scots dictionary.

It could be that this is a reprint of Captain Thomas Brown’s “A Dictionary of the Scottish Language: Comprehending all the words in common use in the writings of Scott, Burns, Wilson, Ramsey, and other popular Scottish authors” which was first published in 1845.

Alexander Warrick's "Scots Dialect Dictionary" was published in 1911. This is more recently re-published as “Chambers Scots Dictionary” in 1982, 1986 and 1993

There's also a concise version of Warrick's Scots Dialect Dictionary that was published in 1985.

We must at this point consider the work of Sir James Wilson. Beginning with “Lowland Scotch as Spoken in the Lower Strathearn District of Perthshire” published in 1916, “The dialect of Robert Burns as spoken in central Ayrshire” published in 1923 and culminating with “The Dialects of Central Scotland” published by Oxford University Press in 1926. These don’t appear strictly to be dictionaries although they have dictionary chapters and so can be categorised similarly.

Perhaps the most comprehensive dictionary of Modern Scots is the Scottish National Dictionary, published in ten volumes (and 4,120 pages) between 1931 and 1976, first edited by William Grant

There's a concise version of the Scottish National Dictionary, first published in 1985 and most recently in 2017

Also derived from this is the Essential Scots Dictionary, which is aimed at schools and has Scots-English and English-Scots translations.

And a pocket version of the Scottish National Dictionary

First published in 1990 the SND also produced a Scots Thesaurus.

Concluding the range of Scottish National Dictionary dictionaries is the Dictionary of Older Scots, compiled between 1921 and 2002 and covers the language of Scotland from its earliest beginnings up to 1700. Its not Modern Scots, its Older Scots

Not quite as comprehensive as the SND is Mary Kean’s "Scottish-English, English-Scottish" from 1972.

David Murison’s “The Guid Scots Tongue” from 1978 is not a dictionary but does give an overview of the language with examples.

Its unclear whether Albert D. Mackie’s “Speak Scotch or Whistle” from 1979 is a dictionary or just a discourse on Scots.

Modern Era

First published in 1995 as part of the Collins Gem range of tiny wee books, there's the Collin's Scots Dictionary, most recently published in 2018. I'm reasonably sure they compiled it themselves without reusing prior art.

James A. C. Stevenson and Iseabail MacLeod's "Scoor-Oot: A Dictionary of Scots Words and Phrases in Current Use" 1998

Not sure of the provenance of this one, but... David Ross and Gavin D. Smith's "Scots-English, English-Scots Practical Dictionary" from 1999

From 2014 there's Geddes & Grosset's Scots - English Dictionary. I dunno if this is original work or based on another dictionary.

Dialect dictionaries

John J. Graham's "Shetland Dictionary" published 1979

Alistair Christie-Johnston, Adaline Christie-Johnston and Neil Anderson's "Shetland Words: A Dictionary of the Shetland Dialect" from 2010

The rather sassily titled “The dialect of Banffshire; with a glossary of words not in Jamieson's Scottish dictionary” from the Rev. Walter Gregory in 1866.

Douglas Kynoch's "A Doric Dictionary" first published in 1996, more recently in 2019

Norman Harper's "Spikkin Doric" from 2009

“The Wye We Speak – Weel Kent Banffshire Werds” by Allan A. Fraser (2010)

Ashley MacKie's "A Doric Dictionary: Volume One - Doric - English" eBook published in 2014

Mary Murray's "In My Ain Words, An East Neuk Vocabulary" from 1982

Hugh Marwick's "Orkney Norn: Dictionary, History and Etymology of the Orcadian Dialect" published 1995

Across the water, when we consider Ulster-Scots to be a variety of the Scots language, there are a number of dictionaries and glossaries.

From 1880 there is William Hugh Paterson’s “Glossary of Words in the Counties of Antrim and Down”

John Pepper's "Ulster-English Dictionary" from 1982

Caroline Macafee's "A Concise Ulster Dictionary" published in 1996 by Oxford University Press

James Fenton's "The Hamely Tongue" from 2014 has another 3,000 word glossary

Although its Kindle-only we might consider William O'Kane's "You Don't Say?: A Glossary of Ulster Dialect" from 2014

Robert Lee Moore, Anne Smyth and Philip Robinson's "The Leevin Tongue" from 2020 contains a 3,000 word glossary

The Scottish Borders town of Hawick has its own dictionary compiled by Douglas Scott "A Hawick Word Book" between 2002 and 2022 (continuously updated) and now more than 2,000 pages

Foreign Language dictionaries

One of the more fascinating dictionaries published recently is Kasia Michalska's "Scots-Polish Lexicon: Leksykon Szkocko-Polski" published in 2014

I don't know if this counts, but it appears to be like a German-Scots dictionary from 1826 "Taschen-Wörterbuch des schottischen Dialekts mit den Erklärungen der Wörter in englischer und deutscher Sprache"

Likewise, with vagueness about whether it counts is “The thistle and fleur de lys : a vocabulary of Franco-Scottish words” by Isabel G. Sinclair - Edinburgh : Blackwood, 1904

Niche dictionaries

There are a couple of dictionaries for specific niche subjects:-

Amanda Thomson's "A Scots Dictionary of Nature" from 2019

For more niche uses there's the Dictionary of Scottish Building, which has loads of construction and house-building terms, this was published in 1996, I think its available online now.

In 2023 there is the Dictionary of Scottish Plant Names by Gregory Kenicer

Online dictionaries

Wiktionary

Andy Eagle’s Scots-Online website hosts a dictionary with Scots to English and English to Scots functionality. It seems to be informed by Andy’s own views on standardised orthography

Doric Phrases - Doric Dictionary

Grammars

At this point it is necessary to mention James A. H. Murray’s “The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland” from 1873. Although this isn’t a dictionary, it does cover the pronunciation, grammar and historical relations of Scots in great detail and covers all the modern dialect groups. The author was also the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 to 1915.

George Thomas Flom’s “Scandinavian Influence on Southern Lowland Scotch” from Colombia University 1900 (archive.org here)

Manual of Modern Scots, Cambridge University Press 1921

Eugen Dieth’s “Grammar of the Buchan Dialect”, on phonology and accidence, was published in 1932 by Cambridge University Press. A second volume, covering grammar and syntax, is being constructed by J. Derrick McClure and published in 2022.

David Purves “Scots Grammar: Scots Grammar & Usage” 1999 from The Saltire Society

Susan Rennie and Matthew Fitt’s “Grammar Broonie: A Guide Tae Scots Grammar” from Edinburgh University Press, 2nd Ed 2000

Christine Robinson’s “Modren Scots Grammar” from Luath Press 2012

George McLennan’s “Gaelic Words in Scots” from New Argyll Publishing 2020

Summary

We can see here that there are about 34 dictionaries listed. There’s also a handful of online ones, which naturally have only arrived on the scene in the last decade of so.

By plotting a histogram of the dated the print editions were first published we can see that they came out sporadically for two hundred years and then in the modern era there was a flurry of new ones starting in the 1970s.

This new upsurge might be due to the ease of desktop publishing now, anyone can churn out stuff on their typewriters and computers and get them independently published.

Or this upsurge might just be some kind of availability bias, its easier to find books that were published recently than it is to find ones published eighty or more years ago.