Definition
In old English law, blinks were boughs broken from trees and scattered across a path or passage where deer were likely to travel. The practice functioned as a rudimentary form of game management or poaching technique — the fallen branches would either guide deer into particular routes or serve as markers for hunters monitoring game movement. The term appears exclusively in the context of forest law and the regulation of deer and game on English estates and royal forests.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of blink; multiple brief closings of the eyes, or brief flashes of light.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Plural of blink; momentary gleams of light; also, brief closings of the eyelids.
The gap here is total. The common word "blinks" carries no hunting, forestry, or legal resonance whatsoever. The legal term is a wholly independent usage rooted in medieval English forest practice, sharing nothing with the common word beyond spelling.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a near-dead end in modern legal research and appears almost exclusively as a historical curiosity. Researchers encountering "blinks" in old English legal texts, forest court records, or manor rolls should recognize it as a term of art from English forest law — a body of law governing royal hunting grounds, game rights, and the privileges and prohibitions attached to them. It does not appear in modern statutory or common law.
The Second Edition of Black's appends insurance case citations alongside the forest law definition — a likely editorial artifact or typesetting error rather than a substantive connection between blinks and insurance law. Researchers should not infer any link between the two; the insurance citations appear to belong to an adjacent entry and were run together in that edition. This is a textbook example of the typographic traps that appear in early editions of Black's and can mislead researchers who treat the printed text as authoritative without scrutiny.
Jacob's Law Dictionary, cited as the source, is the relevant upstream authority. Giles Jacob's work from the early eighteenth century compiled a range of obsolete and technical English legal terms, and "blinks" is the sort of localized, practice-specific term that Jacob preserved but that never made it into general legal usage or modern codification.
For researchers working in English legal history, forest law, or the law of game and hunting rights, blinks sits in a cluster of archaic terms — alongside concepts like vert, venison offenses, and forest courts — that defined the elaborate regulatory system governing English royal forests from the Norman Conquest through the early modern period.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's agree on the core definition: boughs broken from trees and placed where deer are expected to pass. The language is virtually identical across editions, suggesting Black's drew directly from Jacob without independent verification or expansion.
The Second Edition's citation cluster — referencing Wood on Insurance and two insurance cases — is anomalous and almost certainly a printing artifact. Neither cited case (Insurance Co. v. Baltimore Warehouse Co., 93 U.S. 541, and Insurance Co. v. Landau, 62 N.J. Eq. 73) has any evident connection to forest law or deer management. Researchers should treat these citations as belonging to a separate entry that was merged with "blinks" in that edition's typesetting.
No further elaboration appears in either edition. Black's does not define the legal consequences of using blinks unlawfully, which suggests the term was included for completeness rather than because it had continuing legal relevance at the time of publication.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is exclusively English in origin and has no recognized counterpart in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. It belongs to the historical law of English royal forests and has no operative legal meaning in any current jurisdiction.