HIGH-WATER MARK

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does high-water mark mean? 

• HIGH-WATER MARK (noun)
  The noun HIGH-WATER MARK has 1 sense:

1. a line marking the highest level reached

  Familiarity information: HIGH-WATER MARK used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HIGH-WATER MARK (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A line marking the highest level reached

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("high-water mark" is a kind of...):

water line; watermark (a line marking the level reached by a body of water)

 Context examples 

The place was entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hilltops standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one there.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)