common riding
common riding noun: an annual festival in some Scottish towns, in which people conduct a ceremonial procession around the boundaries of the town in order to delineate the area and check for encroachment by neighbouring landowners.
Noun (1)
common riding (plural common ridings)
- An annual festival in some Scottish towns, in which people conduct a ceremonial procession around the boundaries of the town in order to delineate the area and check for encroachment by neighbouring landowners.
- It was this folk-moot which instituted the common riding and invested it with all the religious ceremonial which primitive religion attached to every event in the life of its votaries.1898 July, W. E. Wilson, chapter 1514, in The Border Magazine, volume 3, number 30, page 140
- This flag, or at least a copy of it, is said to have been borne at the annual 'common riding' ever since.1906, Alexander Porteous, The Town Council Seals of Scotland, page 145
Noun (2) capitalized: Common Riding
Common Riding (plural Common Ridings)
- Alternative form of common riding.
- The great day of the whole year in Selkirk is that of the Common Riding, the Riding of the Marches of the town's property.1913, Andrew Lang, John Lang, Highways and Byways in the Border, page 270
- There are four genuine or 'real' Common Ridings in the Borders: Selkirk Common Riding, with its 'Casting the Colours' ceremony, dates from the early 16th century; Harwick Common Riding was first recorded in 1640; Langholm Common Riding, which Hugh MacDiarmid loved to attend, dates from 1816...2007, Michael Lynch, The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, page 507
Forms of common riding
| plural | common ridings |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Common Riding |
| alternative form | Common-Riding |
| plural | Common Ridings |
Questions about common riding
- What does common riding mean?
- Common riding means an annual festival in some Scottish towns, in which people conduct a ceremonial procession around the boundaries of the town in order to delineate the area and check for encroachment by neighbouring landowners.
- What part of speech is common riding?
- Common riding is a noun.
- What is the plural of common riding?
- The plural of common riding is common ridings.
Words near common riding in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: common riding (page history and authors); Common Riding (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “common riding.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/common_riding. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.