Definition
A fixed point in time from which a calendar or chronological reckoning begins; the starting date from which subsequent dates or periods are numbered and computed. In legal contexts, an efoch functions as a temporal reference point — a defined moment from which intervals, deadlines, or chronological sequences are measured.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term in historical legal documents should treat it as a technical term of temporal computation rather than a substantive legal concept in its own right. Its practical significance appears most often in contexts involving the calculation of legal periods — statutes of limitation, lease terms, prescription periods, or the reckoning of ancient rights and customs. A document that sets an efoch is establishing the zero-point of a time calculation, and misidentifying that point will throw off every subsequent date in the analysis.
The term is rare in modern legal usage and will appear almost exclusively in older materials, particularly those dealing with ecclesiastical law, civil law traditions, or learned legal writing influenced by continental European scholarship. Researchers working in these areas should note that the underlying concept — a fixed computational starting point — survives in modern law under different language. Phrases such as "accrual date," "triggering event," or "commencement of the period" perform the same analytical function in contemporary sources.
Because the term is archaic, it will not appear in modern statutory indexes or case law digests. If a historical document refers to an efoch, the researcher's task is to identify what that fixed point actually was — a coronation, a treaty date, a calendar reform — and then verify how subsequent periods were calculated from it.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) defines efoch as "the time at which a new computation is begun; the time whence dates are numbered," citing the Encyclopaedia Londiniensis as its authority. This is a sparse entry, even by the standards of supplemental dictionary material, and Black's offers no further elaboration or legal context.
The definition aligns with the term's general scholarly meaning and reflects the influence of civil law and ecclesiastical scholarship on early Anglo-American legal vocabulary. The historical dictionaries add little beyond the core definition, and no case law or statutory treatment appears to have generated a more developed legal meaning. What the historical sources confirm is that the term was understood as a technical term of chronological science borrowed into legal usage, not a concept with an independent common law pedigree.