Definition
To poind (verb) is, in Scots law, to seize a debtor's moveable goods by legal authority in satisfaction of a debt. The noun form, poinding, denotes both the act of seizure and the legal process by which it is accomplished. Poinding functions as a species of diligence — the Scots law term for the compulsory enforcement mechanisms available to creditors — and operates by transferring the debtor's property interest in specified moveables to the creditor, or making those goods available to satisfy the debt through subsequent sale.
The term is native to Scots law and has no direct equivalent in English common law, though it is broadly analogous to distress or distraint in function.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A seizure of property in lieu of a debt; the animal or property so seized.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To impound, as cattle; to distrain.
The common-language sense tracks the legal meaning unusually closely here, but obscures an important distinction: ordinary usage treats poinding as a general seizure, while in Scots law it is a precisely defined step within a formal enforcement sequence (diligence), carrying specific procedural requirements and legal consequences. A researcher should not assume that the loose common usage captures the doctrinal precision of the legal term.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Burrill references two recognized forms:
REAL POINDING: Operates upon the debtor's moveables already present on the ground of the property in question. Associated with landlord creditors enforcing hypothec over goods brought onto leased premises.
PERSONAL POINDING (implied in the broader procedural framework): Initiated by a creditor holding a liquid document of debt or decree, directed at the debtor's moveables wherever situated.
The distinction between these forms was significant in classical Scots law because the procedural triggers, the creditors entitled to use each form, and the property subject to each differed materially.
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Why It Matters in Research
Scots law specificity: Poinding is a term of art exclusive to Scots law. Researchers working in English or Irish legal sources before the twentieth century will not encounter it in domestic legal usage; its appearance in an English-language source almost always signals either a Scots law context or comparative commentary.
Diligence as the parent framework: Poinding cannot be understood in isolation. It is one component of the Scots law enforcement system called diligence, which also includes arrestment (of debts and moveable property held by third parties) and inhibition (affecting heritable property). A researcher tracing a creditor's enforcement action in historical Scots records must identify which form of diligence was used and in what sequence — poinding alone did not complete enforcement; a subsequent warrant sale was typically required to convert the seized goods into value.
Reformed out of existence: The Debt Arrangement and Attachment (Scotland) Act 2002 abolished poinding and warrant sale, replacing the mechanism with attachment and auction. Researchers working in post-2002 sources will find the term only in historical discussion. Sources predating 2002 use poinding as a live procedural term; sources after that date use it retrospectively. Failure to note this reform produces significant anachronism in doctrinal analysis.
Corpus navigation: In historical Scots legal texts, poinding appears alongside diligence, arrestment, and inhibition as part of a unified enforcement vocabulary. Treatises on Scots private law, particularly those treating moveable property and debt enforcement, are the primary corpus locus. Burrill's cross-reference to Forbes' Institutes and Brande signals that the term appears in institutional writer sources — a category of authority with near-statutory weight in Scots law — and researchers should prioritize those sources over dictionary definitions when doctrinal precision is required.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill (the sole shelf source here) defines poinding briefly and cross-references the variant spelling POYND, indicating that spelling instability in historical sources is real and that corpus searches on a single spelling will miss records. Burrill's paraphrase — "a species of diligence, whereby the property of the debtor's moveables is transferred to the creditor" — captures the functional outcome accurately but compresses the procedural complexity. His citation to Forbes' Institutes, part 3, and to Brande reflects the standard institutional authority for Scots law available to a mid-nineteenth-century American lexicographer working at the edge of his primary jurisdiction.
Webster's 1913 treats poind as dialectal or obsolescent English usage meaning to impound cattle, signaling that the word had some currency in older English usage before becoming primarily a Scots legal term. This historical English sense — simple physical impoundment — is substantively narrower than the Scots legal meaning, which carries full procedural and proprietary consequences.
No major English common law dictionary (Bouvier, Black) gives the term substantive treatment, which itself confirms that poinding was understood by American and English legal writers as foreign to their domestic systems.
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Jurisdictional Note
Poinding is a term of Scots law and does not appear as a domestic legal concept in English, Welsh, Northern Irish, or American law. It was a live procedural mechanism in Scotland until abolished by the Debt Arrangement and Attachment (Scotland) Act 2002. Researchers encountering the term in any non-Scottish legal source should treat it as comparative or descriptive reference rather than as a term with operative domestic legal meaning.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Diligence (Scots Law) for the broader enforcement framework within which poinding operated.
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Distress for the functionally analogous English common law mechanism.
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