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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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About this entry:
First published 1974 (SND Vol. IX). Includes material from the 2005 supplement.
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

TENEMENT, n., v. Also †tennement. Sc. usages:

I. n. 1. As in Eng. a holding; specif. a piece of land occupied under some form of tenure and built on, hence a house, residence; specif. in Sc. phrs. tenement of houses, -land. Owing to the exigencies of space in the large towns, these buildings were often on a large scale and subdivided, at the outset or later, into flats or apartments, owned or leased by separate families. Hence the development of meaning 2. below and of Land, n., 5.Gsw. 1700 Burgh Rec. Gsw. (1908) 310:
He had ane tenement of land, heigh and laigh.Bte. 1706 Rothesay T.C. Rec. (1935) II. 577:
The forsaid tenement of houses back and fore high and laigh with shops chambers and pertinents thereto belonging.Gsw. 1736 J. McUre View Gsw. 203:
He built a great Tenement of Land in the Gallowgate.Abd. 1759 Abd. Journal (14 Aug.):
Large Tenement of Land, . . . well finished and fitted up for setting in different Flats, with a Kitchen to each.Edb. 1772 Edb. Ev. Courant (25 Jan.):
That New-built Tenement of Land, consisting of three storeys.Dmf. 1777 Dmf. Weekly Jnl. (11 Nov.):
A Tenement of Houses, consisting of . . . a Brewhouse, Cellar, Stables, and Peathouse.

2. Short for tenement of land or houses (see above): a large building, usu. of three or more stories, divided into apartments for separate householders, a set of flats under one roof (Sc. 1808 Jam.; Edb. 1880 Trans. Philolog. Soc. 109). Gen.Sc. Also attrib.; by extension: the dwellers in a tenement, the neighbours on the stair.Gsw. 1718 Burgh Rec. Gsw. (1909) 6:
The tenement should be built with peatches before the shops.Sc. 1726 Edb. Ev. Courant (28 Feb.):
The above Tenement is very improveable, being capable to be raised two Stories and Garrets, at 9 Fire Rooms of a Floor each Story.Sc. 1777 Caled. Mercury (4 Jan.):
Three flats or storeys, with two top flats or storeys, and garret storeys, of these two new tenements.Sc. 1797 D. Hume Punishment of Crimes I. 9:
The two houses are under one roof, or are floors of the same tenement.Sc. 1829 Wilson Noctes Amb. (1855) II. 278:
In Embro', where The Land means, ye ken, a Tenement or Tenements, a batch o' houses.Gsw. 1904 H. Foulis Erchie i., xv.:
The MacTurks were a disgrace to the tenement. . . . “There must be a spree on in auld MacPherson's,” said the tenement.Abd. 1950 Evening Express (14 June) 11:
Tenement Property for six tenants, immediate occupation of Flat of two rooms on middle floor.Gsw. 1950 H. W. Pryde McFlannel Family Affairs 93:
Some change from a Glasgow tenement.Edb. 1965 J. T. R. Ritchie Golden City 2:
A good many tenement stairways have a mezzanine floor.Gsw. 1985 Anna Blair Tea at Miss Cranston's 1:
It is nearly two hundred years since tenement Glasgow first began to rise to house the influx of country folk ... em.Sc. 1992 Ian Rankin Strip Jack (1993) 14:
Holmes looked to be a long way up, and Rebus, who lived on the second floor of a tenement, had a natural antipathy to stairs.

3. Deriv. tenementer, n., the holder of a tenement, one who has a feu of land in a village, specif. in Kilmaurs in Ayrshire (see 1912 quot.).Ayr. 1795 Stat. Acc.¹ IX. 369:
Six acres of land was the share which fell to each of these 40 feuars or tenementers.Ayr. 1836 Report Munic. Corp. (Local) 104:
The burgesses [of Kilmaurs] are the proprietors of the land originally feued out; and each one must be possessed of at least one tenement or 40th part, whence they are also called “tenementers”.Sc. 1875 A. Smith Hist. Aberdeen II. 724:
The holders of the Rawes appear to ha]ve been only tenementers.Ayr. 1883 A. Adamson Rambles Round Kilmarnock 140:
Two bailies, the election of whom is vested in the burgesses or “tenementers”.Ayr. 1912 D. M'Naught Kilmaurs 223:
Kilmaurs was made a Burgh of Barony by Cuthbert, third Earl of Glencairn, in 1527, who disposed certain “five pound lands”, extending to 280 Scots acres, equally amongst forty beneficiaries, who were henceforth termed “tenementers,” each one of whom was to hold his fortieth part “in feu farm and heritage, and in free burgage of barony for ever.”

II. v. Ppl.adj. tenemented. Consisting of tenements.wm.Sc. 1979 Robin Jenkins Fergus Lamont 1:
I had seen boys in kilts before, toffs from the villa'd West End, as remote from us in tenemented Lomond Street as the whites in South Africa are from the blacks.