Definition
An archaic Scots legal term meaning robbery. Found in early Scottish legal texts and occasionally in Anglo-Norman legal literature, reif denotes the taking of property by force or violence — what modern law would classify as robbery. The term is historical and carries no operative legal meaning in contemporary practice.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Robbery.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Robbery; spoil. [Obs.]
The common and legal meanings here are essentially identical, reflecting the term's narrow and exclusively historical usage. Both Webster's and Wiktionary mark the word as obsolete, consistent with its absence from modern legal vocabulary.
Why It Matters in Research
Reif appears in medieval Scottish legal records and commentaries, most notably in glosses on the Laws of Alexander — a body of early Scots customary law. Researchers encountering the term in old Scots statutes, plea rolls, or legal commentaries should treat it as a direct synonym for robbery in its historical sense: a forcible taking from another person.
Two navigational points are worth flagging. First, the term is Scots-specific in legal usage. Researchers working in English common law sources from the same period will not encounter reif as a term of art; the vocabulary of robbery in English courts follows a separate lineage. Second, because the term is drawn from Old Saxon (reaf), it may appear in variant spellings — reaf, rief, or reff — in older manuscripts. Researchers working with primary sources should not assume consistent orthography.
The term has no procedural or substantive complexity of its own. Its value to the corpus researcher is purely definitional and contextual: knowing that reif equals robbery prevents misreading or omission when scanning historical Scottish legal material.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition: reif means robbery. Burrill's is the most informative of the three, situating the term explicitly within old Scots law, tracing its Saxon root (reaf), and citing Skene's gloss on the Laws of Alexander as the primary authority. Black's in both editions offers only a bare definition with a nod to Cowell's legal dictionary — a common secondary citation pattern for archaic terms that had largely passed from active use by the time Black compiled his work.
None of the historical dictionaries expand on the elements or degrees of the offense, nor do they distinguish reif from cognate terms such as stouthreif (armed robbery with violence in Scots law, a more aggravated variant). That gap is worth noting: researchers who encounter stouthreif in the same documentary contexts should treat it as a related but distinct concept, not a synonym.
Jurisdictional Note
Reif is a term of Scots law exclusively. It does not appear as a term of art in English common law or in the civil law tradition. Researchers working in cross-border legal history should take care not to import English robbery doctrine when interpreting Scottish sources using this term.