Events from the year 1773 in Scotland.

• Mid-July – the emigrant ship Hector sets out from Scotland carrying emigrants mainly escaping the Highland Clearances around Loch Broom for Pictou, Nova Scotia, where they arrive on 15 September.^[1]
• 6 August – Samuel Johnson sets out for Scotland^[2] where on 14 August he meets James Boswell in Edinburgh for their tour to the Hebrides.^[3] On 12 September they are entertained at Kingsburgh, Skye, by Allan and Flora MacDonald.^[1]
• Penny Post introduced in Edinburgh.^[4]
• Scottish judge James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, begins publication of Of the Origin and Progress of Language, a contribution to evolutionary ideas of the Enlightenment.
• David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, publishes Remarks on the History of Scotland.

• 6 April – James Mill, historian, economist, political theorist and philosopher (died 1836 in London)
• 12 April – Thomas Thomson, chemist and mineralogist (died 1852)
• 23 July – Thomas Brisbane, astronomer and Governor of New South Wales (died 1860)
• 15 September – Alexander Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry, clan chief (died 1828)
• 23 October – Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey, judge and literary critic (died 1850)
• 21 December – Robert Brown, botanist and palaeobotanist (died 1858 in London)

• 9 February – John Gregory, physician, medical writer and moralist (born 1724)

• Timeline of Scottish history