It is with much sadness that the SLC has learned of the death of Mairi Robinson who was formerly editor-in-chief at the Scottish National Dictionary. Anyone who has known and used dictionaries of Scots in the past 40 years will be familiar with Mairi’s name and the great contribution she made to the study of the Scots language. Mairi worked on the later stages of the Scottish National Dictionary and, combining this with the Dictionary of the Older Scottish tongue, saw the publication of the Concise Scots Dictionary in 1985 as editor-in-chief. 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. Mairi subsequently held the position of editor-in-chief of Chambers’ 21st Century Dictionary (1996).

Mairi Robinson 1945-2020 (nee Macnicol) died peacefully in Edinburgh on Wednesday 17 June 2020 at the age of 75 and is survived by her children Nicola and John.