In Scotland, a Pend is a passageway through a building, often from a street through to a courtyard or 'back court', and may be for both vehicles and pedestrian access or exclusively pedestrians.
The term "common pend" can often be found in descriptions of Scottish property for sale, such as "a common pend shared with the residential dwellings above".
A pend is distinct from a vennel or a close, as it has rooms directly above it, whereas vennels and closes tend not to be covered over and are typically passageways between separate buildings. However, a 'close' also means a common entry to multi-dwelling tenement properties in Scotland.
Etymology
The OED suggests that the etymology of the word is probably related to the archaic verb pend - "arch, arch over, vault", this in turn being derived from the French pendre, Latin pendēre "to hang", from which also derives the word pendulum.
References
- Town and Regional Planning Programme, University of Dundee. "Conservation Glossary, entry for "pend"". Archived from the original on 12 February 1997. Retrieved 12 May 2008.
- "Commercial property listing for Arbroath, Scotland". 28 April 2020. Archived from the original on 28 April 2020. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
- "Residential property listing for Campbeltown, Scotland". 29 April 2020. Archived from the original on 29 April 2020. Retrieved 29 April 2020.
- OED, online edition, draft revision December 2007, entries for pend, n and pend, v' '
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