Mairi Robinson

Mairi Robinson (née Macnicol) (21 January 1945 to 17 June 2020) was best known for her dedication towards the study of the Scottish language and Scottish lexicography. She worked on the later stages of the Scottish National Dictionary and became the editor-in-chief where she oversaw the 1985 publication for the Concise Scots dictionary. She was Scots language consultant for the complete edition of Sir Walter Scott's novels. She was committed to adult learning. where she attended Liberton Primary School, and then the George Watson's Ladies' College. She was a brilliant pupil and very academically inclined, well ahead of her peers, so that she became Dux at 16. The latter also drew from the equally majestic Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, covering the language from the 12th century to 1700, that at the time was still incomplete in its publication. The endeavor of covering such a wide time period in a concise publication would have been a daunting one to anyone, with the need to account for sound changes over time, regional dialects and countless variations of spelling. Mairi Robinson's team addressed all these needs compiling a much useful introduction and notes, making easy to cross-reference words to their sources, providing etymology, chronology and their geographical range. The aim was to be all-inclusive, and accessible to every reader who require agile access to the Scot language. The difficulty to achieve conciseness was overcome by including only words for which three quotations could be found. The pronunciation was given according to the extensive phonetic system developed by A.J. Aitken, accompanied by a resourceful table that allowed to recreate the sound of a word in Early, Middle and Modern Scots, all in one handy volume. and "The importance of this single volume with its wealth of etymological, regional and grammatical information should never be underestimated and the Scots community would be much poorer without it". Denton Fox said that he never expected that his wishes for an abridged version of a Scots dictionary would be met so sumptuously. Adam Fergusson described it as a splendid volume and, of course, far more wieldy than the majestic Scottish National Dictionary on which it draws in full.