Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Scottish.
  • noun The language traditionally spoken by people living in the Lowlands of Scotland. Scots is sometimes classified as a variety of English and sometimes as a separate language.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Scotch; Scottish: as, Scots law; five pound Scots.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the Scotch; Scotch; Scottish.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A Germanic language closely related to English and descended from northern dialects of Middle English, spoken in parts of Scotland, now especially in the central, northeastern and southern regions of the country.
  • noun Plural form of Scot.
  • adjective Scottish

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to or characteristic of Scotland or its people or culture or its English dialect or Gaelic language
  • noun the dialect of English used in Scotland

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English scottis, variant of scottisc, Scottish, from Scotte, sing. of Scottes, Scotsmen; see Scot.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Scots and Northern variant of Scottish.

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Examples

  • Containing 400 texts, the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech project SCOTS, aims to help instil in Scots, both native and expatriate, a pride in their national identity, as well as to try to halt the decline of the language, which unlike Gaelic receives relatively little promotion.

    languagehat.com: SCOTS. 2004

  • "The English are our biggest minority group, but you never hear the term Scots English as you might hear Scots Italian, Scots Indian or Scots Welsh," he said.

    unknown title 2009

  • Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, released a letter he had written to Mr. MacAskill in which he called the Scots minister's decision "inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice."

    Lockerbie Fallout Spreads to London 2009

  • Amid the brouhaha of raised voices I didn't dare speak up — in Scots-accented French — to suggest more sedentary but perhaps more efficacious means, such as a lawyer's letter.

    It's Lights, Camera, Strike in France Lennox Morrison 2010

  • It's called "Johnnie Lad" and she delivered it in Scots dialect to the heart-catching original strathspey tempo.

    Great Scots 2009

  • Think of it this way: a good copy-editor working on a novel written in Scots dialect can apply prescriptivism and correct it into Standard English.

    More on Critique Hal Duncan 2009

  • It's called "Johnnie Lad" and she delivered it in Scots dialect to the heart-catching original strathspey tempo.

    Archive 2009-08-01 2009

  • The frustrating part for the Scots is that the Czechs, while occasionally slick in attack, appeared glaringly vulnerable in defence.

    Strikerless Scotland's negative approach is punished by Czechs Ewan Murray at Synot Tip Arena 2010

  • Apparently a lot of Scots from the Isle of Arran came to New Brunswick.

    Everybody out of the gene pool : Bev Vincent 2008

  • The site, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, contains more than 4m words in Scots and Scottish English.

    August 2007 2007

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