Dictionaries of the Scots Language
Dictionars o the Scots Leid

Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

Hide Quotations Hide Etymology

Abbreviations Cite this entry

LEGAL, adj., n. Also legall. Sc. usages:

I. adj. Of a preacher or his doctrine: laying stress on the observance of the law of the Old Testament and hence on salvation by works rather than justification by faith, moral as opposed to evangelical, a common distinction in the theological controversies of the 18th c. in Scotland. Cf. Law, n.¹, 1. (8) and (10).Sc. 1718 A. Crichton Life Col. Blackader 500:
Some that are called legal preachers, are blamed for leaning too much to the Arminian side.Sc. 1786 A. Gib Sacr. Contempl. I. 124:
No such thing could be natural to any heart … as Legality, or a legal bias toward a doing for life, in opposition to a believing on Christ for life.Sc. 1943 J. Macleod Sc. Theology 154:
The one strain was the teaching of the Legal, the other of the Evangelical school.

II. n. With the def. art., short for legal reversion: the period, now ten years, during which a debtor may redeem heritable property adjudged to his creditors; “when declarator of expiry of the legal is pronounced the right to redeem is irretrievably lost” (Sc. 1946 A. D. Gibb Legal Terms 50).Sc. 1707 Morison Decisions 105:
Innes … now pursues a declarator, that the legal of his adjudication is expired, and the lands are irredeemably his own.Sc. 1764 Caled. Mercury (31 Dec.):
Sir James Dunbar gives them this public notice that the legal expires on the ninth day of March, so that if they do not, within that time, constitute and confirm their debts, by omitting which they may be cut out.Sc. 1793 Appeal Cases (Lords) III. 305:
Prescriptive possession on adjudication, of which the legal was declared to be expired, did not give an absolute right of property.Sc. 1822 Scott F. Nigel x.:
There is a large sum wanted in redemption — yet, if it is not raised, there will be an expiry of the legal, as our lawyers call it, and the estate will be evicted.Sc. 1838 W. Bell Dict. Sc. Law 411:
Before the debtor can be foreclosed, and his right of redemption cut off, an action of declarator of expiry of the legal is necessary, at the instance of the adjudger.Sc. 1896 W. K. Morton Manual 171:
The creditor holds the property in security during the legal, under obligation to apply any surplus income towards the principal debt.