Definition
In Scots law, to formally accuse or inform against a person; to lodge a criminal charge. The term appears chiefly in historical Scottish legal records and proceedings, where it carried the specific sense of initiating or presenting an accusation before a court or ecclesiastical body. A person so accused was said to be "delated."
The compound phrase "delatit off arte and parte" means accused of being accessory to a crime — that is, charged not as a principal actor but as a participant in or facilitator of the offense. This usage reflects the older Scots criminal law distinction between principal and accessory liability.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Marked as an obsolete form of "dilate."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Delate" carried several senses in general English: to carry or convey; to spread abroad or make public; to bring a charge against or accuse; and, in some usages, to conduct or carry on. The accusatory sense is illustrated in Bp. Burnet: "As men were delated, they were marked down for such a fine."
The legal meaning in Scots law — formal accusation before a tribunal — sits closest to Webster's third sense but is narrower and more technical. Wiktionary's reduction of the word to a mere obsolete spelling variant of "dilate" is misleading for legal research purposes: in historical Scottish legal documents, "delate" is a term of art, not a spelling error.
Common Confusion
Delate should not be confused with "dilate" (to expand or enlarge, or to speak at length), with which it shares no legal relationship despite superficial orthographic similarity. It should also be distinguished from "relate" and "translate" in their older Latin-derived senses. Within Scots legal records specifically, researchers may encounter "delator" (the accuser or informer) and "delation" (the act of accusation); these are the nominal forms of the same concept and should be understood together.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially dead outside of historical Scots law and ecclesiastical proceedings. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century Scottish criminal trial records, kirk session minutes, and early modern English historical state trials. Several important cautions apply:
First, jurisdiction matters absolutely. "Delate" has no recognized meaning in English common law. Finding it in a legal document signals that the document originates in, or is describing, Scottish legal proceedings — a navigational clue about the source's legal context.
Second, the phrase "delatit off arte and parte" is a significant technical term for accessory liability in older Scots criminal procedure. Researchers analyzing complicity doctrine in Scottish legal history should treat this phrase as a term of art, not merely descriptive language.
Third, the term appears in the State Trials reports (Howell's State Trials), which are part of many historical legal collections. Encountering "delate" or "delated" in that corpus without understanding its Scots context can lead to misreading of the proceedings.
Fourth, the ecclesiastical dimension should not be overlooked. Scottish kirk sessions had their own accusatory procedures, and "delation" in church court records may refer to moral or religious offenses, not criminal ones in the secular sense. The procedural context — secular or ecclesiastical — changes the meaning significantly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill's are in complete agreement: "delate" means to accuse, and the term is Scots law. This is a rare instance of total convergence across the major historical dictionaries, which itself reflects how narrow and settled the term's legal meaning is — there was simply no ambiguity to dispute.
Burrill's is the most useful of the three for research purposes. It supplies the fuller citation trail, referencing both Pitcairn's Criminal Trials (a foundational compilation of early Scottish criminal proceedings) and Howell's State Trials, giving researchers two primary-source pathways into the term's usage in context.
Bouvier's entry is the most compressed — a single line — reflecting the term's marginality in American legal practice, where it would have appeared only in discussions of comparative or historical Scots law.
None of the historical dictionaries address the ecclesiastical usage of "delation," which is a notable gap given how frequently the term appears in kirk session records accessible through Scottish historical archives.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to Scots law and has no counterpart in English common law or American law. Researchers working in U.S. or English legal materials who encounter "delate" are almost certainly reading a document of Scottish origin or a commentary thereon.