To be let off without penalty or punishment. This expression has nothing to do with Scotland, but rather with the early meaning of scot, that is, a tax assessment. Thus scot-free meant not having to make such a payment, and later was extended to mean being exempted from other kinds of obligation, including punishment. The earliest use of the term dates from the Magna Carta of 1215. Later it was transferred to nonlegal issues, as in Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela (1740): “She should not, for all the trouble she has cost you, go away scot-free.”