Sc. Also 5–7 lard(e. [The regular Sc. form of LORD (repr. northern ME. laverd), surviving only in a special sense.
The southern form lord was as early as the 14th c. introduced into Scottish use in the English senses of the word. The native form lard appears occasionally in the 15th c. instead of lord: for examples see LORD sb.]
A landed proprietor. In ancient times limited to those who held immediately from the king.
c. 1450. Holland, Howlat, 193. Pure freris … That, with the leif of the lard, Will cum to the corne ȝard At ewyn and at morn.
1508. Kennedie, Flyting w. Dunbar, 515. I sall ger bake the to the lard of Hillhouse.
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot. (1858), I. 65. Ouir all the land lord or laird wes nane, Bot he tuke part at that tyme witht the tane.
1596. Dalrymple, trans. Leslie’s Hist. Scot., IX. 177. The lard of Cesfurde … meites him.
1647. Clarendon, Hist. Reb., II. § 19. A petition drawn up in the names of the nobility, lairds, clergy and burgesses, to the King.
1716. Lond. Gaz., No. 5424/2. Our Detachment burnt the Laird’s House.
1721. Ramsay, Whin-Bush Club, i. Tho’, to my loss, I am nae laird, By birth, my title’s fair.
1786. Burns, Twa Dogs, 51. Our Laird gets in his racked rents.
1846. M’Culloch, Acc. Brit. Emp. (1854), II. 205. By the lesser barons were meant the proprietors of the smaller class of estates, provincially called lairds.
1872. E. W. Robertson, Hist. Ess., 138, note. In Scotland every tenant in capite, holding in Ward and Blench, continued to be reckoned as a Baron and was known as the Laird.
Hence (chiefly nonce-wds.) Lairdess, a laird’s wife; Lairdie, a petty laird; Lairdly a., having the rank or quality of lairds; Lairdocracy [after aristocracy], lairds as forming a ruling class.
17[?]. in Hogg, Jacob. Relics (1819), I. 83. Wha the deil hae we gotten for a king But a wee wee German lairdie?
1819. Metropolis, III. 83. The Highland and Border Lairdies.
1848. Tait’s Mag., XV. 123. The Scotch lairdocracy may take it into their heads.
1857. J. Aiton, Domest. Econ., 51. The Court of Teinds,… by their cruel bias to the lairdocracy, starve the ministers of the kirk.
1863. Burton, Bk. Hunter, 10. Her sister lairdesses were enriching the tea-table conversation with broad descriptions of the abominable vices of their several spouses.
1877. Tinsley’s Mag., XXI. 46. He yet was descended from an ancient lairdly stock in that northern county.
