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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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First published 1971 (SND Vol. VIII). Includes material from the 2005 supplement.
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

STAIR, n.¹ Also sterr, staier (in sense 2.). Sc. forms and usages. [′ste(ə)r]

1. (1) A flight or succession of steps leading from one floor of a building to the next, a staircase (Sc. 1787 J. Beattie Scoticisms 82). Gen.Sc. Mod.Eng. uses only the pl. stairs. Hence doun or up the stair, down- or upstairs. Gen.Sc.Gsw. 1716 Burgh Rec. Gsw. (B.R.S.) 551:
Liberty to build his stair on the west sidwall.Sc. c.1730 E. Burt Letters (1815) I. 21:
At the third stair, that is three stories high.Sc. 1756 M. Calderwood Journey (M.C.) 221:
She flew in such a passion, that she had almost thrown him over the stair.Edb. 1801 Edb. Weekly Jnl. (14 Jan.) 14:
The body of a new-born infant was exposed in a stair at the head of the West Bow.Sc. 1812 W. Angus Eng. Grammar 351:
Are you going to write up the stair or down the stair?Edb. 1819 Edb. Ev. Courant (3 April) 3:
The villains had entered the warehouse by a front window, one stair up.Sc. 1828 D. M. Moir Mansie Wauch xxi.:
To gie them a hand down the stair wi' the coffin.Arg. 1914 N. Munro New Road xx.:
Up a stair that had been newly washed.Sc. 1915 N.E.D. s.v. Stair:
In Scotland, where ‘up the stair,' ‘down the stair' are the usual equivalents for upstairs, downstairs, and ‘(to go up) six stairs' means what in English would be expressed by ‘six flights of stairs.'wm.Sc. 1974 Roddy McMillan The Bevellers 39:
We'll lie it alangside the sterr therr. m.Sc. 1990 Douglas Lipton in Hamish Whyte and Janice Galloway New Writing Scotland 8: The Day I Met the Queen Mother 69:
It's like some kindy big weird cat
creepin' up an' doon the sterrs, ...

(2) Specif. in a tenement: the common staircase giving access to the flats on the first and upper floors, freq. in comb. common stair. Gen.Sc. Phr. to bide in a stair, to live in an upstairs flat (Edb. 1971).Edb. 1808 Session Papers, Buchanan v. Buchanan Proof (8 April) 92:
The deponent's mother, who lived in the same stair with Miss Buchanan.Edb. 1819 Edb. Ev. Courant (8 May) 4:
That lodging or dwelling-house, being the second door of the common stair, No. 23, Dundas Street.Ags. 1831 Perthshire Advert. (16 June):
An attempt was to be made on the Jail, which is within the same stair as the Town-House.Edb. 1893 J. Livingston Our Street 6:
There were five families, the first entering from what was called the “street door,” inhabiting the street flat and the basement, and four families of us “up the stair.”Gsw. 1904 N. Munro Erchie 185:
[He] went into Erchie's close and slowly climbed the stair.Gsw. 1935 MacArthur and Long No Mean City i.:
The overflow might be “rinnin' doon the stair.”Ags. 1962 D. Phillips Lichty Nichts 34:
“Guid neeburs” wilkingly took their turn of scrubbing the stair or loabby.Edb. 1995 Irvine Welsh Marabou Stork Nightmares (1996) 21:
As a kid I did the normal things kids in the scheme did: played fitba and Japs and commandos, mucked about on bikes, caught bees, hung around stairs bored, battered smaller/weaker kids, got battered by bigger/stronger kids. Gsw. 1999 Jimmy Boyle Hero of the Underworld 49:
'You live up my stair, you and that midget.' w.Lth. 2000 Davie Kerr A Puckle Poems 61:
Ti keep his like fae oot oor hair,
train, keepie-uppie aff the flair,
or heid-the-ba agen the stair,
fae morn ti nicht, ... em.Sc. 2000 James Robertson in Conrad Wilson In Scotland 3 43:
That's him angry, said Mrs Bovie. She was his neighbour. The one that always keeps you right, was how Kathleen used to describe her; there's one on every stair.

(3) Combs.: stairfit, the foot of a staircase and the space or flat adjacent, stairheid, stair-head, the landing at the top of a flight of stairs, or a common stair, also attrib. Gen.Sc., now obsol. or obs. in Eng.; stairheid rammie, a quarrel among neighbours on a stair n. 1. (2); stair-pit, a coal-mine “which the workmen could descend or ascend by means of a ladder erected in short lengths from the bottom to the top” (†Lnk. 1885 F. Gordon Pyotshaw 218).Dmf. 1706 Session Papers, Dunbar v. Irvine:
He saw Bailie Corbet on the Stair head of the Tolbuith. . . . There was a great Croud upon the Stairs, and about the Stairfoot.Sc. 1754 Session Papers, Grant v. Longmoor (1 Feb.) 21:
There was one centinel at the stair-foot, and another at the stair-head.Edb. 1825 R. Chambers Traditions II. 191:
This celebrated and once attractive beauty died in a stair-fit, somewhere in the Canongate.Edb. 1844 J. Ballantine Miller ii.:
People have been known to live on the same stair-head in some of the eight-story houses of the High Street for twenty years.Fif. 1894 J. W. McLaren Tibbie and Tam 113:
He let a' the folks on the stairheid ken that he was gaun to “file an action for damages!”Ags. 1930 A. Kennedy Orra Boughs xxix.:
Stairheid rows became dull.Abd. 1932 D. Campbell Bamboozled 27:
Jist cairry the lamp tae the stair-fit.Gsw. 1935 MacArthur and Long No Mean City ii.:
Aw the neebors will be coming to the stair-heid.Peb. 1938 Border Mag. (Aug.) 122:
Sic-like clavers as an auld wife wad hear at her ain stair-fit.wm.Sc. 1966 W. S. Graham in Oxford Bk. Sc. Verse 586:
Under the stairhead gas At the lonely tenement top.Sc. 1987 Scotsman (14 Mar) 8:
The same applies to the Scottish Nostalgia Industry (particularly that part of it based south of Watford) which extols the virtues derived from running barefoot through the slums six days a week and sharing a stairheid lavatory. wm.Sc. 1988 Robin Jenkins Just Duffy 73:
It was in a stairhead lavatory in Crimea Street, before the buildings were condemned. Sc. 1990 Scotsman (8 Sep) 10:
Old St Andrews House in Edinburgh worked in that way. Long, wide corridors, now sadly interrupted by fire doors (couldn't they be made of heat resistant glass?) and generously proportioned staircases, facilitated informal meetings and "stair-heid" chats. Sc. 1993 Herald (6 Apr) 14:
Should a blind man pay for stairheid lighting? Gsw. 1993 Herald (23 Aug) 7:
Even A Small Deposit, a 13-minute slice of tenement life set in post-war Port Glasgow, necessitated the presence of 13 people up a close as director Eleanor Yule and her team captured a wee drama in a stairheid cludgie.Sc. 1994 Herald (5 Nov) 16:
"Stairheid rammies" have continued into the third and fourth generations, and the only possible "extirpation", namely banishment, has been removed so all that is left is to deal with each incident as it arises. Sc. 1996 Scotsman (28 Feb) 18:
Where there's a gap in our daily lives is in conversational speech. We don't have stairheid meetings and chats down washing greens any more ... Sc. 1997 Scotsman (8 Aug) 24:
A Scottish council has officially bracketed "windae hingin" with drug dealing, neighbours from hell, owners of large uncontrollable dogs and those who party till dawn while playing their stereos to the max. ... And, in the parlance of the tennies, it has caused a "stairheid rammy" especially as tenants who do not comply face eviction. Sc. 1998 Daily Record (31 Oct) 16:
Sandra laughs: "The kids, who are used to large bathrooms and en suite toilets, thought the "stairheid cludgie" (or shared communal toilet) was very bizarre. Sc. 1999 Herald (21 Sep) 11:
One newspaper survey in the early 1870s reported on the stair head "wee shebeens" in the Saltmarket-Gallowgate area of Glasgow ... Sc. 2000 Herald (26 Jan) 28:
... as far as the stuff that came through the lead pipes and out of the one (cold) tap in the house and the cistern of the stairhead privy was concerned, we wouldn't call the Queen our auntie. That it was the best water in the world ...

Phr.: heid like a stairheid or sterrheid, A very sore head.Gsw. 1988 Michael Munro The Patter Another Blast 32:
heid One way of saying that you have a hangover is Ah've got a heid lik a sterrheid, the idea being that your head is pounding as if it was a common landing in a tenement close that suffers the tramp of many heavy feet.Edb. 1996:
Will youse bairns shut up! Ma heid's like a stairheid wi this migraine o mine.

2. A series of notches cut in a sheep's ear as a mark of ownership, resembling the steps of a stair. Obs. exc. in comb. stair-axes, id. (Ork. 1910 Old-Lore Misc. III. i. 24). Cf. Icel. stig, step, id.Ork. 1737 Old-Lore Misc. I. ii. 55:
The Top of the Left Lug and fouer Lops in the Stump and two Staiers in ech side of the right Lug.