Versions and Changes

DSL Online provides free access to The Scottish National Dictionary (SND) and A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST). First published during the twentieth century, their 12,000 pages in 22 volumes provide a remarkable record of the language, history, culture and traditions of the Scots-speaking people. By sharing these dictionaries online we allow their contents to be enjoyed far and wide free of charge.

As differences between versions are substantial, we strongly recommend that any publication or research using DSL Online indicate the version number of the database used.

DSL Online’s current database version is 3.1, which was published on 15 April 2025. Version 1 was published in March 2004, to which the second supplement of SND was added in 2005. Version 2 was published in September 2014. Version 3.0 was published in April 2022.

Changelog

We list below the main changes from each version.

Version 3.0 to version 3.1 (April 2025)

Version 2 to version 3.0 (April 2022)

Version 1 to version 2 (September 2014)

Future plans

The ten volumes of our Scottish National Dictionary (SND) were published in print between 1934 and 1976, the twelve volumes of our Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) between 1937 and 2002. The content of all 22 volumes (running to some 79,000 entries over 12,000 pages) was first published online in 2004 following a complex, 3-year digitisation project. Apart from adding a supplement to SND in 2005, most of our subsequent work has concentrated on making the online versions of SND and DOST more user-friendly and adding XML structure to facilitate future improvements.

Our next round of priorities are as follows:

While our ambitions are grand, our resources are modest. We rely entirely on an annual grant from the Scottish Government to fund our operations but the amount we receive does not keep in line with inflation. If you would like to support our work, please consider a donation.