The Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) comprises electronic editions of the two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language: the 12-volume Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and the 10-volume Scottish National Dictionary (SND). DOST contains information about Scots words in use from the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth centuries (Older Scots); and SND contains information about Scots words in use from 1700 to the 1970s (modern Scots). Together these 22 volumes provide a comprehensive history of Scots, and a New Supplement now (2005) brings the record of the language up to date. These are therefore essential research tools for anyone interested in the history of either Scots or English language, and for historical or literary scholars whose sources are written in Scots or may contain Scots usages.

In the DSL, these two dictionaries are being published together in their full form for the first time. Thus, information on the earliest uses of Scots words can be presented alongside examples of the later development of the same words. By making the DSL freely available on the Internet, we also aim to widen access to the source dictionaries and to open up these rich lexicographic resources to anyone with an interest in Scots language and culture. Its educational uses range from university research to help with the production of Scots materials for young children.

TO SEARCH the Dictionary of the Scots Language:

From the menu on the left, choose either "Search the DSL", "Browse Headwords" or "Search Bibliographies". If you select "Search the DSL", enter a Scots word or phrase (or English equivalent) in the blank box. You may "Search" either the "Full Entry", or click the arrow at the right and choose from a drop-down menu.

"Browse Headwords" searches for Scots and English words spelled as in the main dictionary entries, but will also try to suggest matches. DSL currently has five sections:

DOST
DOST Additions
SND (SND1)
SND Supplement (1976) (SNDS)
SND New Supplement (2005) (SNDS2)

These can be searched either together, separately, or in the combinations indicated in the drop-down menu. "Search Bibliographies" allows you to search the DOST or SND Bibliographies together or separately, and to narrow searches to "Author" or "Work Titles". Three separate input forms are provided for these different types of searches, and the results differ somewhat for each type of search. All search terms are case insensitive.

The DSL will always search the full text of the DSL ("All DSL Texts"), unless you choose to narrow this from the drop-down menu, upper-right.

  All dictionary searches result in two output frames. Searches of the full text of the DSL display the first full entry containing the search term in the right frame and a linked list of all entries containing the term in the left frame. Browsing headwords displays all entries with the search term in a headword form in the right frame. The left frame contains a scrolling word wheel of surrounding entries.

  The full text search engine used for The Dictionary of the Scots Language is amberfish, an XML-aware, open source engine developed by Etymon. It allows field searches and supports phrase searching in the present implementation. Searches of the full text are run on the full entry or other subfields, such as Author's names, Titles, etc.

All searches of the full text of the DSL are ordered by amberfish's relevancy ranking system, with an entry's "score" for a particular search, numbered from 1 to 100, included in round brackets before the listing of the entry. The list of entries found in a search appears in the left frame in sets of 20 entries. Each entry in the list is a link for that entry targeted to appear in the right frame when clicked. The first entry for any search displays immediately in the right frame and is overwritten when other entries are selected. For Headword Form searches, the entries are ordered alphabetically, are not highlighted in any way, and are anchored at the beginning of the entry. For searches on the whole DSL, the search term is highlighted by a red background and white text to mark it off easily from the rest of the entry. In addition to highlighting, an attempt is made to open the entry in the right frame near the first occurrence of the search hit.

All searches in amberfish are case insensitive. Right truncation is allowed with the * metacharacter. Thus "burNs" will find "Burns" or "burns", and "loch*" will find "loch" or "lochiel". All punctuation marks except for the hyphen are ignored by amberfish. Thus "loch-liver" will work, but not "R. Burns" which throws an error. To search for "R. Burns", enter it in the form: "R Burns" A special case is made for apostrophes, so that a search for "john's" is actually sent to amberfish as two "words": "john s" and either form will work.

Searching for terms with special characters such as yoghs can be done by typing the entity reference name surrounded by hyphens, e.g. "win-yogh-et", "-yogh-ong", or "cn-eacute-ow". In the case of yoghs, the number "3" can be used as shorthand for the entity name itself. Thus the two searches above might also be run with the search terms "win3et" and "3ong".

Boolean AND and OR searches, such as "wind AND snow", are run by typing the boolean keywords in uppercase letters. Otherwise the words "and" and "or" are considered part of a phrase.

Double clicking any word in a DSL entry or in the vocabulary-rich SND Introduction launches a full text search for the word anywhere in an entry. Note: double click searches for words containing Unicode or other rendered special characters are not supported at this time.

 Users with Unicode-capable browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer 6.0, Netscape 7, or Mozilla) will have special characters such as yoghs and International Phonetic Alphabet characters rendered in Unicode. Users with earlier browsers will have the same characters rendered as tiny GIF images. Note: not all printers support Unicode at the present time, and not all Unicode-aware browsers offer uniform support of Unicode, though such support is expected in future releases. Internet Explorer users will not be able to view Unicode characters if they have selected "Ignore font styles" in the Accessibility/Formatting section of Internet Options. If yoghs or other special characters do not display, they should look to see if this option is selected and uncheck it.