WATER

10 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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WATERAuthored
The Law Mind • 1523 words
Definition
In law, "water" carries at least three distinct operative meanings, and the applicable meaning turns entirely on the legal context in which the term appears. 1. As a physical substance or commodity. Water as a thing capable of ownership, use, and regulation — the liquid that fills rivers, lakes, aquifers, and the sea. In this sense the legal meaning closely tracks everyday usage, though property and regulatory law layer significant complexity onto what counts as water, who owns it, and under what conditions its use may be restricted. 2. As a body of water or geographic feature. In the plural — "waters" — the term typically denotes a defined body or aggregate of bodies: a river, lake, ocean, tidal estuary, wetland, or the like. Phrases such as "waters of the United States," "navigable waters," and "foreign waters" use the term in this geographic sense. The scope of such phrases is among the most heavily litigated questions in environmental and property law. 3. As a component of real property. At common law, a pool or stream was treated as part of the land through which it passed or upon which it sat. A grant of land accordingly carried the water upon or within it — a pool of twenty acres would pass with a grant of twenty acres without separate mention of the water. A grant of water alone, without more, historically passed only a fishery, not ownership of the bed or the water itself.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An inorganic compound (H₂O) found at room temperature as a clear liquid; present naturally as rain; found in rivers, lakes, and seas; solid form is ice, gaseous form is steam. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The fluid which descends from the clouds in rain, and which forms rivers, lakes, seas, etc.; also, any body of standing or flowing water; any liquid secretion or humor. The gap between common and legal meaning is significant in two respects. First, the common understanding of water as a substance says nothing about ownership, appurtenance to land, or regulatory jurisdiction — all of which are central to legal usage. Second, the shift from singular ("water" as substance) to plural ("waters" as geographic or jurisdictional category) carries enormous legal weight that ordinary usage does not signal. A researcher who reads "waters of the United States" as simply meaning "some water in America" will fundamentally misread its jurisdictional significance.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES Public waters. Navigable bodies of water over which the public holds rights of passage and use. The sovereign (state or federal) holds title to the bed of navigable waters in trust for the public. Private waters. Non-navigable waters over which a private landowner holds title, subject to the rights of adjacent or upstream/downstream owners. The distinction between public and private waters affects what the owner may do with the water's bed and flow. Waters of the United States. A statutory and regulatory term of art under the Clean Water Act defining the geographic scope of federal jurisdiction. Its boundaries have been the subject of repeated Supreme Court litigation and agency rulemaking. Navigable waters. A subset of "waters of the United States" (in federal regulatory law) and a separate common-law concept governing admiralty jurisdiction, riparian rights, and state land grants. The two definitions do not always coincide. Surface water. Water appearing on the surface of the ground, not confined to a defined channel — rainfall runoff, flood overflow, and the like. Treated distinctly from watercourses and lakes in riparian rights law. Groundwater. Subsurface water, including water in aquifers. Governed by different doctrinal frameworks (reasonable use, prior appropriation, or correlative rights depending on jurisdiction) and generally excluded from watercourse riparian rules.
Why It Matters in Research
Navigational hazard: terminology shift. The legal meaning of "water" and "waters" has shifted dramatically since the founding era. Historical sources — including Bouvier and Black's first edition — address water primarily as a component of real property and as a subject of riparian common law. They do not contemplate federal regulatory jurisdiction over wetlands, ephemeral streams, or isolated water bodies, all of which became live questions under twentieth-century environmental statutes. Researchers reading historical dictionary entries must be alert to this gap. The "waters of the United States" problem. This phrase, central to Clean Water Act jurisdiction, has no stable legal definition. Agency rules defining it have been promulgated, challenged, vacated, and replaced multiple times. A researcher tracing this phrase across the Law Mind corpus will encounter shifting meanings depending on the date of the source. The phrase is not equivalent to "navigable waters" in the traditional sense, though the two overlap significantly. Public/private water distinction. Rapalje & Lawrence's treatment of the distinction between public waters and private waters subject to public navigation rights remains useful background for researching riparian access, bed ownership, and obstructions. That framework still operates in state common law even where federal regulatory jurisdiction has expanded. Water as real property appurtenance. The principle that a pool or watercourse passes with a land grant unless separately reserved has practical consequence in title research, easement disputes, and water rights conveyances. This rule appears in Bouvier and is traceable through early American cases; it remains operative in many states but interacts with prior appropriation systems in the West in ways that produce different results. Western water law. In prior appropriation states, water is not appurtenant to land in the riparian sense — it is a separate property right allocated by priority of use. Historical dictionary sources written from a common-law riparian perspective largely miss this, or address it inadequately. Researchers working on western water rights should treat Bouvier and Black's early editions as incomplete guides and consult the Property Law Encyclopedia entry on federal reserved water rights alongside state-specific sources. Federal reserved rights (Winters doctrine). Federally reserved water rights for Indian reservations and federal lands operate outside both riparian and prior appropriation frameworks. This is entirely absent from the historical dictionaries covered here. Historical note on banishment. Both Black's and Bouvier record "water" in the context of ancient banishment — exile accompanied by an order that no one supply the banished person with fire or water, the two necessaries of life. This is a historical curiosity of Roman and early common law origin (Bouvier identifies it as legitium exilium in Livy) with no operative modern legal significance. Researchers encountering this usage in historical texts should not read it as bearing on property or regulatory water law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) offers the most legally useful of the historical definitions, recognizing both the commodity sense and the geographic (plural) sense, and noting that water is "neither land nor tenement" — signaling that it occupies an unusual position in property classification. Bouvier states the foundational common-law principle most clearly: a pool of water passes with a grant of the land, but a bare grant of water passes only a fishery. Both sources reflect the riparian common-law world of the nineteenth century and do not address regulatory or constitutional dimensions. Rapalje & Lawrence adds useful texture on the public/private water distinction, particularly the rule that owners of private waters subject to a public navigation right retain rights over the bed and water so long as navigation is not obstructed. This remains a live doctrinal point in states with mixed navigable/non-navigable water systems. Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not appear to contain a substantive entry on water in the excerpts available; the material attributed to Anderson in the source data appears to be misassigned (the text describes waste, not water). No historical dictionary in the Law Mind collection addresses prior appropriation, federal reserved rights, or the Clean Water Act framework — the dominant areas of water law litigation in contemporary practice. For those topics, the Encyclopedia entries are essential complements.
Jurisdictional Note
Water law is among the most jurisdiction-sensitive fields in American law. Eastern states generally follow riparian rights doctrine; western states largely follow prior appropriation. Federal regulatory jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act overlays both systems but does not displace state allocation law. Researchers should identify the applicable state's doctrine before relying on any general statement about water rights, including those in historical dictionaries.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Environmental & Energy Law Encyclopedia § Navigable Waters, Waters of the United States, and Jurisdiction The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia § Water Rights — Federal Reserved Water Rights (Winters Doctrine) The Law Mind Administrative Law & Government Encyclopedia § Clean Water Act — NPDES Permits, Water Quality Standards, and Wetlands
Related Terms
Waters (geographic/jurisdictional sense) Navigable waters Waters of the United States Riparian rights Prior appropriation Watercourse Littoral rights Groundwater Surface water Tidal waters Public trust doctrine Federal reserved water rights Wetlands Fishery Appurtenance Eminent domain (as applied to water rights)
WATERmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
Banishment by an order that no man should supply the person banished with fire or water, the two necessaries of life.
WATERmain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
As designating a commodity or a subject of ownership, this term has the same meaning in law as in common speech ; but in another sense, and especially in the plural, it may designate a body of water, such as a river, a lake, or an ocean, or an ‘aggregate of such bodies of water, as in the phrases “foreign waters,” “waters of the United States,” and the like. Water is neither land nor tenement nor susceptible of absolute ownership. It is'a movable thing and must of necessity continue common by the law of nature. It admits only of a transient Wa aS d property, and if it escapes for a moment, the right to it is gone forever, the qualified owner having no legal power of reclamation. It is not capable of being sued for by the name of “water,” nor by a caiculation of its cubical or superficial measure; but the suit must be brought for the land which lies at the bottom covered with water. As water is not land, neither is it a tenement, because it is not of a permanent nature, nor the subject of absolute property. It is not in any possible sense real estate, and hence is not embraced in a covenant of general warranty. Mitchell v. Warner, 5 Conn. 518. —Coast waters. See Coast.—Foreign waters. Those belonging to another nation or country or subject to another jurisdiction, as distinguished from ‘domestic’ waters. The Pilot, 50 Fed. 437, 1 C. C. A. 523.—Inland waters. See INLAND.—Navigable waters. See NAVIGABLE.—Percolating waters. Those which pass through the ground beneath the surface of the earth without any definite channel, and do not form a part of the body or flow, surface or subterranean, of any watercourse. They may be either rain waters which are slowly infiltrating through the soil or waters seeping through the banks or the bed of a stream, and which have so far left the bed and the other waters as to have lost their character as a part of the flow of that stream. Vineland Irr. Dist. v. Azusa Irr. Co., 126 Cal. 486, 58 Pac. 1057, 46 L. R. A. 820; Los An- gles v. Pomeroy, 124 Cal. 597, 57 Pac. 585; erriman Irr. Co. v. Keel, tah, 96, 680 Pac. 719; Deadwood Cent. K. Co. v. Barker, 14 8. D. 558, 86 N. W. 619; Montecito Val. Water Co. v. Santa Barbara, 144 Cal. 578, 77 Pac. 1113.—Private waters. Non-navigable streams, or bodies of water not open to the resort and use of the general public, but entirely owned and controlled by one or more individuals—Public waters. Such as are adapted for the purposes of navigation, or those to which the general public have a right of access, as distinguished from artificial lakes, ponds, and other bodies of water privately owned, or similar natural bodies of water owned exclusively by one or more persons. See Lamprey v. Metcalf, 52 Minn. 181, 53 N. W. 1139, 18 L. R. A. 670, 38 Am. St. Rep. 541; Carter v. Thurston, 58 N. H. 104, 42 Am. Rep. 584; Cobb v. Davenport, 32 N. J. Law, 369; West Point Water-Power Co. v. State, 49 Neb. 223, 68 N. W. 507: State v. Theriault, 70 Vt. 617, 41 Atl. 1080, 43 L. R. A. 290, 67 Am. St. Rep. 648.— Subterranean waters. Waters which lie wholly’ beneath the surface of the ground, and which either ooze and seep through the subsurface strata without pursuing any defined course or channel, (percolating waters.) or flow in a permanent and regular but invisible course, or lie under the earth in a more or less immovable body, as a subterranean lake.—Surface waters. As distinguished from the waters of a natural] stream, lake, or pond, surface waters are such as diffuse themselves over the surface of the ground, following no defined course or channel, and not gathering into or forming any more definite body of water than a mere bog or marsh. They generally originate in rains and melting snows, but the flood waters of a river may also be considered as surface waters if they become separated from the main current, or leave it never to return, and spread out over lower ground. See Schaefer v. Marthaler, 34 Minn. 487, 26 N. W. 726, 57 Am. Rep. 40; Crawford v. Rambo, 44 Ohio St. 279, 7 N. B 429; New York, etc., R. Co. v. Hamlet Hay Co., 149 Ind. 344, 47 N. E. 1060; Cairo, etce., R. Co. v. Brevoort (C. C.) 62 Fed. 129, 25 L of swimming it was deemed an evidence of his guilt; but, if he sunk, he was acquitted. —Water-power. The water-power to which miperian owner is entitled consists of the fall in the stream, when in its natural state, as it passes through his land, or along the aa? f of it; or, in other words, it consists of the di ference of level between the surface where the stream first touches his land, and the surface where it leaves it. McCalmont v. Whitaker, 8 Rawle, (Pa.) 90, 23 Am. Dec. 102.—Water right. <A legal right, in the nature of a corporeal hereditament, to use the water of a natural stream or water furnished through a ditch or canal, for general or specific purposes, such as irrigation, mining, power, or domestic use, either to its full capacity or to a measured extent or during a defined portion of the time. See Hill v. Newman, 5 Cal. 63 Am. Dec. 140; Cary v. Daniels, 8 Metc. (Mass.) 480, 41 Am. Dec. 532; Canal Co. v. Hess, 6 Colo. App. 497, 42 Pac. 50.—Waterscape. An aqueduct or passage for water.—Waters of the United States. All waters within the United States which are navigable for the purposes of commerce, or whose navigation successfully aids commerce, are included in this term. The Danfl Ball, 6 Fed. Cas. 1161.
WATERmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883
(1350) WASTING OF HIS ESTATE, (defined). 18 B. to a right of navigation by the public, as Mon. (Ky.) 9; 7 Bush (Ky.) 307.
WATERn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
The fluid which descends from the clouds in rain, and which forms rivers, lakes, seas, etc. "We will drink water." Shak."Powers of fire, air, water, and earth." Milton. A body of water, standing or flowing; a lake, river, or other collection of water. Remembering he had passed over a small water a poor scholar when first coming to the university, he kneeled. Fuller. Any liquid secretion, humor, or the like, resembling water; esp., the urine. A solution in water of a gaseous or readily volatile substance; as, ammonia water. U. S. Pharm. The limpidity and luster of a precious stone, especially a diamond; as, a diamond of the first water, that is, perfectly pure and transparent. Hence, of the first water, that is, of the first excellence. A wavy, lustrous pattern or decoration such as is imparted to linen, silk, metals, etc. See Water, v. t., 3, Damask, v. t., and Damaskeen. An addition to the shares representing the capital of a stock company so that the aggregate par value of the shares is increased while their value for investment is diminished, or "diluted." [Brokers' Cant]
WATERv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To wet or supply with water; to moisten; to overflow with water; to irrigate; as, to water land; to water flowers. With tears watering the ground. Milton. Men whose lives gilded on like rivers that water the woodlands. Longfellow. To supply with water for drink; to cause or allow to drink; as, to water cattle and horses. To wet and calender, as cloth, so as to impart to it a lustrous appearance in wavy lines; to diversify with wavelike lines; as, to water silk. Cf. Water, n., 6. To add water to (anything), thereby extending the quantity or bulk while reducing the strength or quality; to extend; to dilute; to weaken. To water stock, to increase the capital stock of a company by issuing new stock, thus diminishing the value of the individual shares. Cf. Water, n., 7. [Brokers' Cant]
WATERv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To shed, secrete, or fill with, water or liquid matter; as, his eyes began to water. If thine eyes can water for his death. Shak. To get or take in water; as, the ship put into port to water. The mouth waters, a phrase denoting that a person or animal has a longing desire for something, since the sight of food often causes one who is hungry to have an increased flow of saliva.
waternoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
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An inorganic compound (of molecular formula H₂O) found at room temperature and pressure as a clear liquid; it is present naturally as rain, and found in rivers, lakes and seas; its solid form is ice and its gaseous form is steam. | An inorganic compound (of molecular formula H₂O) found at room temperature and pressure as a clear liquid; it is present naturally as rain, and found in rivers, lakes and seas; its solid form is ice and its gaseous form is steam. | The liquid form of this substance: liquid H₂O. | An inorganic compound (of molecular formula H₂O) found at room temperature and pressure as a clear liquid; it is present naturally as rain, and found in rivers, lakes and seas; its solid form is ice and its gaseous form is steam. | A serving of liquid water. | The aforementioned liquid, considered one of the Classical elements or basic elements of alchemy. | Water in a body; an area of open water. | A body of water, almost always a river, sometimes a lake or reservoir, especially in the names given to such bodies. | A combination of water and other substance(s). | Mineral water. | A combination of water and other substance(s). | Spa water; hot springs. | A combination of water and other substance(s). | A solution in water of a gaseous or readily volatile substance. | A combination of water and other substance(s). | A fluid in the body. | Urine. | A combination of water and other substance(s). | A fluid in the body. | Amniotic fluid or the amniotic sac containing it. (Used only in the plural in the UK but often also in the singular in North America.) | A combination of water and other substance(s). | A fluid in the body. | A fluid that causes swelling. | The water supply, as a service or utility. | A state of affairs; conditions; usually with an adjective indicating an adverse condition. | A person's intuition. | Excess valuation of securities. | Something which dilutes, or has the effect of watering down. | A particular quality or appearance suggestive of water: | The limpidity and lustre of a precious stone, especially a diamond. | A particular quality or appearance suggestive of water: | A wavy, lustrous pattern or decoration such as is imparted to linen, silk, metals, etc.
waterverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
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To pour water into the soil surrounding (plants). | To wet or supply with water; to moisten; to overflow with water; to irrigate. | To provide (animals) with water for drinking. | To get or take in water. | To urinate onto. | To dilute. | To overvalue (securities), especially through deceptive accounting. | To fill with or secrete water or similar liquid. | To wet and calender, as cloth, so as to impart to it a lustrous appearance in wavy lines; to diversify with wavelike lines.
Watername
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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A hamlet in Manaton parish, Teignbridge district, Devon, England (OS grid ref SX7580). | A hamlet on the B6238 Burnley Road in Rossendale borough, Lancashire, England (OS grid ref SD8425). | A barangay of Baco, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines (unconfirmed). | A surname

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