A Note on ‘Kenning’ in Scots Law

The term ‘kenning’ was encountered in two contexts in Scots law: one is a ‘land kenning’ and the other is a ‘kenning to terce’; in each case, the word ‘kenning’ derives from ‘ken’, i.e. to know. One might think that ‘ken’ is a Scots word only; but, while there is a definition in the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue1 (DOST), it is also defined in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). DOST gives two meanings for kenning: imparting, recognition, identification; and ‘sight or view (of a thing)’. It then mentions ‘land kenning’ as being ‘the distance from anything which is the limit at which it can be seen at sea’. Only the first meaning in DOST is given in the Scottish National Dic