Pend

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] 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", from which also derives the word pendulum.

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