Definition
The mark made upon the shore by the sea at its highest tide — that is, the line reached by flowing water at flood tide. In historical English law, flodemark denotes the physical boundary traced by the sea at its maximum ordinary height, functioning as a legal demarcation for purposes of property ownership, coastal jurisdiction, and riparian rights. The term is essentially synonymous with high-water mark as applied to tidal shores.
Common Language
No entry in Wiktionary. Webster's 1913 does not include flodemark as a standard entry.
Editorial note: The term has no meaningful presence in modern common usage. It survives only in historical legal sources and antiquarian dictionaries. Modern legal and survey practice uses "high-water mark" or "mean high tide line" to describe the same boundary concept. A researcher encountering flodemark in an old deed, coastal grant, or boundary dispute should treat it as a period-specific synonym for those modern terms.
Common Confusion
Flodemark should not be confused with low-water mark, which defines the opposite boundary of the foreshore — the line reached by the sea at its lowest ebb. The distinction matters because the foreshore itself (the zone between high and low water) carries significant ownership and access implications under English common law, historically belonging to the Crown unless specifically granted. Flodemark marks the upper boundary of that zone, not the zone itself.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears primarily in historical English property and coastal law materials. Researchers working with colonial-era grants, early American coastal land titles, or English common law sources on tidal boundaries may encounter flodemark as a marker of proprietary limits between private upland ownership and the foreshore or tidal zone.
The practical trap: flodemark is not a term of art in modern American or English law. If it appears in a historical deed or boundary description, its legal significance depends entirely on how high-water mark was interpreted in the relevant jurisdiction at the relevant time — and that interpretation has varied considerably. English common law historically placed ownership of the foreshore in the Crown; American states adopted varying rules upon independence, with some vesting foreshore title in the state and others allowing private ownership to the high-water mark. Treating flodemark as a self-defining term in a historical document without examining the applicable jurisdiction's tidal boundary doctrine can lead to serious misreading of property rights.
The corpus trail: Burrill cites Blount, and Bouvier cites both Blount and Cunningham's Law Dictionary. Researchers needing deeper historical grounding should consult Thomas Blount's Nomo-Lexicon (1670), which is the proximate source for both dictionary entries. The term does not appear to have generated significant independent case law under this spelling; the substantive doctrine travels under high-water mark and foreshore in the reports.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill and Bouvier are in precise agreement, both drawing from Blount's Nomo-Lexicon as their common source. Neither dictionary elaborates beyond the core definition — both treat flodemark as a simple synonym for high-water mark at flood tide, requiring no further subdivision or qualification.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the legal consequences attached to this line. Neither Burrill nor Bouvier uses the flodemark entry as an occasion to discuss foreshore ownership, Crown rights, or the competing common law rules about tidal boundaries. That doctrine must be found elsewhere in those same dictionaries under foreshore, littoral, and riparian, or in the substantive treatise literature. The flodemark entry is purely definitional — a glossing of an archaic term, not an analysis of its legal significance.
Bouvier's additional citation to "And. 189" likely refers to Anderson's Law Dictionary; researchers should verify that source independently if its content is material.
Jurisdictional Note
The concept marked by flodemark — the high-water line as a property boundary — operates differently across jurisdictions. English common law vested the foreshore in the Crown; American states are not uniform, with some following English Crown-analogue rules vesting tidal lands in the state, and others permitting private grants to the high-water mark. The term itself is historical English; its American legal equivalent is governed by state property law and, in some contexts, federal navigability doctrine.