Assoilzieing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Formally clearing a defendant of a charge or accusation in a Scottish court of law
2. Declaring an accused person free from blame and releasing them from the case in Scots law
3. Absolving someone of a legal charge by a judicial verdict, as practised in Scotland

Etymology: "Assoilzieing" is the present participle of "assoilzie", a Scottish form of "assoil" that keeps sounds English has since dropped. Its ancestors run back through Scottish Middle English "assolyhe" and "assolȝe" to Anglo-Norman "as(s)oilier" and Old French "as(s)oille". Those French forms are where the sense of "to absolve, to set free" came from, and the older English word shared that meaning. The difference between the Scottish and English spellings lies in the middle syllable. Scots kept the "-li-" or "-le-" sound that dropped out of the English pronunciation, so the Scottish version preserves more of the French sound than standard English does. The English form "assoil" lost that sound and became a shorter, two-syllable word.