Definition
In Scots law, an addition or supplement to a legal document or transaction. The term appears in several specific contexts:
(1) Eik to a reversion: An additional loan made to a wadsetter — the mortgagor who holds a reversionary interest in a wadset (the Scots equivalent of a mortgage) — supplementing the original principal sum secured against the estate.
(2) Eik to a confirmation: A supplementary addition to a confirmation, the Scots procedure by which certain writings or rights were ratified and validated.
(3) Eik to a testament: An addition or codicil-like supplement appended to a testament.
(4) Eik to an inventory: An addition made to an executor's inventory of the deceased's estate, typically used when assets were discovered or assessed after the original inventory was compiled.
The term is exclusively a Scots law term and has no operative meaning in English common law or American legal practice.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An eat-in kitchen — a kitchen with space for a table and chairs, or a counter with barstools.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as a standard English word.
Editorial note: The common modern usage of "eik" as a real estate abbreviation for "eat-in kitchen" is entirely unrelated to the Scots law term. A researcher encountering "eik" in a property listing or modern conveyancing file should not assume any connection to the historical Scots legal meaning.
Common Confusion
The variant spellings across historical sources — eik, ecik, and eke — create identification problems in archival research. Black's second edition renders the examples as "ecik," likely a typographical drift from "eik." Burrill references the same concept without the prefix forms. Researchers should treat eik, ecik, and eke (in Scots legal contexts) as the same term.
Why It Matters in Research
EIK is a narrow, jurisdiction-specific term of Scots law that rarely surfaces outside Scottish legal history and comparative property law research. Several practical research notes apply:
Spelling instability is the primary trap. The historical dictionaries are not consistent — "eik" and "ecik" appear as variant forms across editions of Black's alone. Burrill uses neither prefix form in his entry text. Any full-text search of historical Scots legal materials should include both spellings.
The wadset context is essential to understanding eik to a reversion. Wadset is itself a term that has no English common law equivalent; researchers unfamiliar with the Scots property system may misread the relationship between the wadsetter, the reversioner, and the additional loan that an eik represents. This connects the term directly to the broader corpus of Scots heritable property law.
Eik to an inventory has practical implications in Scots executry (estate administration). When executors discovered omitted estate assets after closing an initial inventory, an eik provided the mechanism for supplementation without invalidating the original. This procedural function distinguishes it from a simple amendment and may matter when tracing the completeness of historical estate records.
The term does not appear in English common law dictionaries outside of those (like Black's) that incorporated Scots law terms as part of comprehensive coverage. Its presence in a document is itself a jurisdictional signal — pointing toward Scots practice and Scottish court records rather than English or American sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
All five source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: eik is an addition in Scots law. The points of divergence are minor but worth noting.
Rapalje & Lawrence provides the most substantive entry, explicitly connecting eik to a reversion with the wadsetter relationship and noting the executor-inventory usage. This makes Rapalje & Lawrence the most useful starting point for understanding the term's operational contexts.
Black's first edition and Bouvier's are nearly identical, both citing Bell's Dictionary as authority. Bouvier reproduces the "cik" spelling variant in one instance, which appears to be a typesetting artifact rather than an intentional variant.
Black's second edition introduces the "ecik" spelling in its examples, which is not found in other sources and is almost certainly a typographical error in that edition.
Burrill adds a reference to Forbes' Institutes — a primary Scots institutional text — making his entry the one most grounded in primary source authority, though his entry is the briefest in substantive explanation. Researchers wanting to trace the term to its institutional foundation should follow the Forbes citation.
None of the historical dictionaries address the eik to a testament with any detail, and all treatment of the executor's inventory usage is cursory. Historical Scots legal texts and Scottish Record Office materials will be necessary for research beyond the dictionary level.
Jurisdictional Note
EIK is a term of Scots law exclusively. It has no counterpart in English common law or American law. Research involving this term is necessarily confined to Scottish legal history, Scottish court and estate records, and comparative studies of Scots and civil law property systems.