Dictionaries of the Scots Language
Dictionars o the Scots Leid

Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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First published 1941 (SND Vol. II). Includes material from the 2005 supplement.
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

BREED, n.²

1. A litter of young; “a brood” (Mry.¹ 1925; Abd.⁹ 1935). Now obs. or dial. in Eng. (N.E.D.).

2. An (extended) family, tribe.ne.Sc. 1958 Jessie Kesson The White Bird Passes (1987) 53:
"...A wild market that. Such as you won't see again. At least one of our breed getting killed at it,..."ne.Sc. 1958 Jessie Kesson The White Bird Passes (1987) 100:
I can tell you that, Aggie. I've had my bellyfull of the breed of him.Per. 1979 Betsy Whyte The Yellow on the Broom 103:
Our nicknames were beetles, rowans, sugar, roundheads, meals, pigs' lugs and dannies. All of these breeds were intermarried somehow... If two or three different breeds were working for one farmer each breed would stay at least a few hundred yards a way from each other...Per. 1990 Betsy Whyte Red Rowans and Wild Honey (1991) 42:
At that time travellers were a bit like the old Scottish clans, and if you met a young person you could tell at once whether he was a Burke, Stewart, McKenzie, or whatever. They seldom married outside their own 'breed' as they called them. I have often been told, on meeting some traveller whom I had never seen before, 'You are a Johnstone, or if not there is a good bit of a Johnstone in you.'