Definition
THIFT is a Scots law term for theft. It is the Scottish variant spelling and form of the common law concept of theft — the felonious taking and carrying away of the personal property of another with intent to deprive the owner of it permanently. The term appears in historical Scottish criminal records and legal texts and is not used in modern legal writing, where "theft" has uniformly displaced it.
THIFT-BUTE (also THIFT-BOTE): A related compound term appearing in Scots law records, equivalent in structure to the English "theft-bote" — the offense of taking a reward from a thief in exchange for agreeing not to prosecute, or of compounding a theft without bringing the matter before the court. This was treated as a criminal act in itself, separate from the underlying theft.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Thift" does not appear as a recognized modern English word. It is an archaic or dialectal spelling variant with no current common usage.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. Webster's 1913 does not include "thift," reflecting that by the nineteenth century the spelling had fallen entirely out of use even in Scottish contexts.
The term has no meaningful gap between common and legal usage to analyze — it is purely a historical legal term of Scots law with no surviving common-language counterpart. Researchers encountering it should treat it as an orthographic variant of "theft" specific to early Scottish records.
Common Confusion
THIFT vs. THEFT: These are the same legal concept. The distinction is purely one of spelling convention in early Scottish sources. Researchers should not treat them as distinct offenses or assign different legal meaning based on spelling alone.
THIFT-BUTE vs. THEFT-BOTE: These are likewise the same offense — receiving a reward to suppress prosecution of a theft. The Scottish and English spellings appear in different sources but describe legally equivalent conduct. Burrill cross-references theft-bote under the thift entry, confirming the correspondence.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early Scottish criminal records — particularly the Pitcairn Criminal Trials, the primary source Burrill cites — will encounter "thift" as the standard spelling for theft charges. Failing to recognize the variant can cause a researcher to miss relevant entries in indexes or transcriptions that are organized by exact spelling.
The compound form THIFT-BUTE carries independent research significance. Compounding offenses (accepting payment to drop a prosecution) were treated seriously in both Scottish and English law, and a record mentioning thift-bute does not simply describe theft — it describes a secondary offense by someone who may not be the original thief at all. Researchers should not conflate a thift-bute charge with a theft charge when analyzing criminal proceedings.
The Burrill entry is brief and serves primarily as a cross-reference bridge. The substantive law on the underlying concepts — theft and theft-bote — must be pursued in dedicated entries and in the primary Scottish sources Burrill points toward.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary identifies THIFT as a Scots law term meaning theft and cites Pitcairn's Criminal Trials (Part 2, p. 144) as the primary source. This citation points to Robert Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, a foundational compilation of Scottish criminal proceedings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The citation is specific and reliable.
Burrill does not elaborate on the substantive law of thift beyond the cross-reference, which reflects the dictionary's function as a navigational tool for readers who needed only to be redirected to the main entry for theft or theft-bote. No divergence from the English law of theft is signaled, and Burrill implies the concepts are functionally identical, differing only in the Scottish spelling convention.
No other source dictionary in the current corpus includes a dedicated entry for THIFT. Researchers requiring fuller historical treatment of the Scots law of theft should consult Hume's Commentaries on the Law of Scotland Respecting Crimes, which provides the authoritative early modern treatment of theft doctrine in Scottish law.
Jurisdictional Note
THIFT is a term of historical Scots law only. It has no application in English common law jurisdictions, American law, or modern Scottish law. Its appearance in research is effectively confined to pre-nineteenth-century Scottish criminal records and the secondary literature discussing those records.