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Pend is a Scottish architectural term referring to a passageway that passes through a building, often from a street through to a courtyard or 'back court', and may be for both vehicles and pedestrian access[1] 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".[2][3]
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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).[4]
References
- ^ Town and Regional Planning Programme, University of Dundee. "Conservation Glossary, entry for "pend"". Archived from the original on 1997-02-12. Retrieved 2008-05-12.
- ^ "Commercial property listing for Arbroath, Scotland". 2020-04-28. Archived from the original on 2020-04-28. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
- ^ "Residential property listing for Campbeltown, Scotland". 2020-04-29. Archived from the original on 2020-04-29. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
- ^ OED, online edition, draft revision December 2007, entries for pend, n2 and pend, v2' '