noun a system of joint landholding by which each tenant had several detached strips of arable land allocated in rotation by lot each year, so that each would have a share in turn of the more fertile land; in the 20th century only in the Hebrides; now historical in Modern Scots 15-.
adjective, adverb land held under this system of tenure, divided by this system la17-e20. Compare rig etymology: Scots; first element possibly from Gaelic rann ‘part, portion’; the term survived in later use by Scottish Travellers; JS defines it as ‘natural rows of soil in the ground’