The Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) has many references to mosses, the earliest referring to particular boggy or peaty locations. For example, in the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland (1306-1668) there is mention in 1565 of “..the Tressirrig-mos and round about the samyne mos…” in which moss occurs both as a place-name element and as a general term for a piece of marshy land. 

Moss often referred to a tract of bog or moor as useful property especially as a source of peat or turves.  In this context we find references to peat as a valuable commodity, as in the following 1459 quotation from the Liber S. Thome de Aberbrothoc: “Owr predecessoris … tholyt the smyth tyll byg ane smyde in the mos becaus of his colys and fuell that was necessar to his office”. Moss often referred to a moorland on an estate which was allocated to tenants for cutting fuel, for example this 1795 extract from the Statistical Account of Scotland: “He has presently no accommodation of moss; the moss on which he had a locality being exhausted, and no new one yet settled for him”.

The word moss appears as part of a large variety of compounds, many of which relate to the rights of tenants to work the peat moss.  There is the moss bailie, moss grieve or moss reeve, who oversaw the peat-cutting rights; moss-leave was the right or permission to cut peats in a moss, and a moss-day was a day’s work by a gang of peat-cutters.

There are also many terms referring to the flora and fauna of the moss: among the birds are moss-bluiter, (common snipe); moss-cheeper or moss-lark (meadow pipit); and moss-drummer (lapwing).  The Dictionary of the Scots Language lists many more.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries