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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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First published 1960 (SND Vol. V).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

†IMPROBATION, n. Sc. Law: disproof, confutation of a writ; an action brought to prove a document false or forged and so ensure its being produced (Sc. 1825 Jam.). [ɪmprɔ′beʃən]Sc. 1715 Burgh Rec. Gsw. (1908) 536:
The provost represented that there were summonds of nonentry and of reduction, improbation and declarator, raised at the touns instance against the fewers in Gorballs.Sc. 1785 H. Arnot Crim. Trials 282:
As the criminal jurisdiction of the Court of Session does not amount to the power of awarding sentence of death, the following mode of procedure is observed. When the forgery appears to the Court to be of so deep a nature as to deserve a capital punishment, they declare the deed in question to be reduced, as being false and forged; and remit the prisoner to the Court of Justiciary: This sentence is called a “Decreet of Reduction and Improbation, and Act and Remit.”Sc. 1798 Monthly Mag. (Sept.) 176:
A Process of Reduction and Improbation — An action to set aside and disprove a Deed, which is very common.Sc. 1861 Bell Dict. Law Scot. 521:
A reduction may proceed on forgery, and it is termed an action of improbation. But it may also proceed where forgery is alleged merely to insure the production of the deed. It is this action which obtains the name of reduction-improbation.

Hence (1) improbative, adj., liable to improbation; not proved to be true; (2) improbatory, adj., made in improbation or disproof of a writ. [ɪm′prɔb-](1) Sc. 1760 Acts of Sederunt (20 Dec.) 525:
The receipt in question, . . . being by law improbative, . . . is not astructed by the evidence.Sc. 1828 Session Cases 987:
These bonds were written by Dickie's shopman and were quite improbative.Sc. 1864 Ib. 13:
It is an informal and improbative deed, but it is plainly . . . an addition to her will.(2) Sc. 1861 Bell Dict. Law Scot. 69:
By the old form of process, where a deed or writing was objected to as false or forged, after the party founding on the document had abidden by it sub periculo falsi, pleadings, called articles improbatory and approbatory, were ordered to be put in.