Jamieson, JOHN, D.D., a meritorious Scotch scholar, was born in Glasgow, March 3, 1759, studied for the ministry, and in 1781 was ordained pastor of the Secession (Anti-burgher) congregation at Forfar. In 1797 he was translated to Edinburgh, where he died July 12, 1838. Jamieson's reputation rests on his Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808-9; supplement 1825; best edition by David Donaldson, 4 vols. 1879-87). It is a work of great industry, and of very considerable value as a collection of Scotch words, phrases, customs, &c.; but it possesses little critical or philological merit, according to the present standard. His preliminary dissertation on the 'Origin of the Scots Language' is an elaborate but unsuccessful attempt to prove that the Scottish language is really the Pictish language, and that the Picts were not Celts, but Scandinavian Goths. Jamieson also wrote on the Culdees, on the affinities of the Greek and Latin languages to the Gothic, on the royal palaces of Scotland, &c.; and he published editions of Barbour's Bruc, Blind
Harry's Sir William Wallace, and Slezer's Theatrum Scotice.