runrig means A system of land tenure in which farmland was divided into irregular strips and allocated to tenants in rotation; a strip of such land. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
Why “runrig” is a great word
RUNRIG — [Noun] A historical system of Scottish communal agriculture where arable land was apportioned as unfenced strips among tenants, who held them in periodic rotation to ensure equitable distribution of soil quality. From Middle English, combining 'run' (perhaps in the sense of a division or course) and 'rig' (meaning a ridge or strip of arable land); the earliest known use is from 1437. Unlike a "croft" (a fixed, smallholding farmstead with a cottage) or "enclosure" (the legal privatization and consolidation of open fields into bounded, individual farms), runrig was a fundamentally collective and temporary arrangement. It is the ghostly geometry of lazy-beds on a hillside, the annual lottery of good earth and poor, and the tangible expression of a community bound by shared necessity—a fleeting order imposed upon the land, acknowledging that fairness, like fertility, must be regularly redistributed.
noun
- A system of land tenure in which farmland was divided into irregular strips and allocated to tenants in rotation; a strip of such land.