Definition
An obsolete Scots law variant spelling of "serjeant," used in older Scottish legal records and texts to denote a class of officer or official whose duties depended on context — typically a judicial, administrative, or feudal officer. The term appears in historical Scots Latin and Law French sources as a rendering of the Latin *seriandus*. As a functional matter, a seriant in old Scots usage referred to the same class of person as the serjeant in English law: an officer of a court, a feudal tenant holding by serjeantry, or a law officer of rank.
Common Confusion
SERIANT, SERJEANT, SERGEANT, and SERJEANTY are easily conflated in historical research, and the confusion is compounded by inconsistent spelling across periods and jurisdictions. "Seriant" is specifically a Scots variant, while "serjeant" is the preferred English legal spelling for the senior order of barristers (serjeants-at-law) and for certain court officers. "Sergeant" is the modern anglicized form that has largely been absorbed into military and police usage. "Serjeanty" (also spelled serjanty or sergeantry) is a distinct concept — a mode of feudal tenure — and should not be read as synonymous with the office or title of seriant or serjeant. Researchers encountering "seriant" in Scots records should resist immediately mapping it onto the English serjeants-at-law, as the Scots usage more often refers to a local administrative or court officer than to a member of a legal order of barristers.
Why It Matters in Research
The chief research value of this entry is navigational: "seriant" is a rare variant that will appear in transcriptions of older Scottish legal records, particularly those drawing on Latin or Law French formulations, and it can cause confusion if the researcher is unfamiliar with Scots legal spelling conventions. Several points deserve attention:
First, Scots legal Latin frequently produced variant spellings of officer titles that do not map cleanly onto English equivalents. Encountering "seriant" in a document does not automatically signal the same legal status as an English serjeant-at-law.
Second, Skene's *De Verborum Significatione* (1597), cited by Burrill, is the primary historical gloss for this term in the Scots legal tradition. Skene's work is a foundational Scots law glossary and is the appropriate starting point for contextualizing this term in any early modern Scottish source.
Third, corpus researchers working through Burrill should note that the entry is extremely sparse — little more than a cross-reference — meaning that the substantive content for understanding this term's practical meaning must be retrieved from the SERJEANT entry and from Skene directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary treats "seriant" in a single compressed entry, identifying it as a Law French term with a Latin root (*seriandus*), situating it in old Scots law, and glossing it simply as "serjeant" with a citation to Skene's *De Verborum Significatione*. Burrill adds nothing beyond the cross-reference, which itself signals that the term had no independent doctrinal content by the time Burrill was compiled — it was already a historical curiosity, useful primarily for reading antique texts rather than practicing law.
No other major historical legal dictionaries in common circulation (Bouvier, Black's early editions, Jacob's Law Dictionary) appear to carry a distinct entry for "seriant" as a Scots form; this variant is, for practical purposes, exclusive to the Scots legal record and to Burrill's acknowledgment of it. The absence of the term from English legal dictionaries reinforces its character as a purely regional and archaic spelling variant rather than a term of independent legal significance.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to old Scots law and has no operative meaning in modern Scottish, English, or American legal systems. Researchers encountering it should treat it as a historical Scots form requiring reference to Skene's *De Verborum Significatione* and related early modern Scots legal sources for proper interpretation.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — SERJEANTS-AT-LAW
Law Mind Encyclopedia — FEUDAL OFFICES AND TENURE
Law Mind Encyclopedia — SCOTS LAW: HISTORICAL SOURCES AND GLOSSARIES