Pauline with John Swinney, Scotland’s First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills
What have been the key landmarks in the history of Scots lexicography?
You can see the foundations in the 18th century: in the glossaries that were produced as aids to readers of medieval Scottish texts and also – paradoxically – in the lists of contemporary Scottish terms deemed as ‘improper’ by the linguistically insecure. The first major monument, however, was undoubtedly John Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, first published in 1808, which defines some 15,000 terms from the recorded history of Scots. Jamieson’s work prevailed without serious rival until publication of the ten-volume Scottish National Dictionary (SND) between 1931 and 1976 and the twelve-volume Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) between 1931 and 2002. The newest landmark is arguably the online Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL), which presents the entirety of SND and DOST to a global audience free of charge.