Pend

A pend in Edinburgh

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 typically designed for vehicular rather than exclusively pedestrian access.

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.

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"