Definition
An archaic Latin term from old English law denoting a stream or flow of water, particularly the channel or current of water issuing from a mill — the equivalent of what later sources call a flume or mill-race. The term refers specifically to a defined, directed watercourse rather than a natural body of water at rest.
Why It Matters in Research
FULLUM appears almost exclusively in medieval English legal records and early common law pleadings involving water rights, mill ownership, and riparian disputes. Researchers encountering the term in old land grants, manorial records, or mill tenancy documents should treat it as a functional descriptor of a water channel tied to a mill operation — not a freestanding body of water. Because the term had a precise operational meaning (the moving water produced by or channeled toward a mill), its presence in a document signals a water-right or millowner dispute rather than a simple boundary description. The Latin form "fullum aquæ" — literally a fullum of water — appears as a unit of legal description in the same manner that other archaic measures of water appear in old English conveyancing. Researchers should be alert that manuscript abbreviations and transcription errors may obscure the term; variants and corrupted spellings are plausible in unpublished archival material. The term's survival in English legal dictionaries is almost entirely attributable to Blount's Nomo-Lexicon, making that source the primary authority and Burrill's entry essentially a transmission of Blount.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary relies directly and without elaboration on Blount, citing the definition: "fullum aquæ; a stream of water; a fleam, [flume,] such as comes from a mill." The bracketed gloss "[flume]" appears to be Burrill's own editorial clarification bridging the archaic English word "fleam" — itself a variant of "fleme" or "fleam," meaning an artificial watercourse or mill-leat — to the more familiar American term "flume." This editorial choice reflects the practical challenge that nineteenth-century American legal dictionary compilers faced when transmitting distinctly English medieval vocabulary to an American readership. No significant divergence exists among sources because the term's usage was too narrow and period-specific to generate competing definitions. The absence of the term from later major dictionaries (Black's, Bouvier's) is itself instructive: by the time systematic American legal lexicography was underway, FULLUM had receded entirely from active legal usage. Researchers should therefore treat it as a terminus of historical research rather than a living term.
Jurisdictional Note
FULLUM is exclusively a term of old English law with no independent American legal development. Its relevance is confined to research into English medieval and early modern records, manorial surveys, and mill-right litigation predating the systematic reception of English common law into American jurisdictions.