high-water mark

high-water mark

1. Literally, the highest level a body of water has reached, or the mark designating such a point. Due to climate change, the high-water mark on this beach has been getting higher every year.
2. The apex, peak, or highest point of something. The high-water mark of the country's economic boom was in 2007.
See also: mark
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

high-water mark

The peak of something, especially an achievement. For example, This composition is the high-water mark of his entire output. This expression alludes to the highest mark left on shore by the tide. [Mid-1800s]
See also: mark
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.

high-ˈwater mark

the highest stage of achievement: This was the high-water mark of the ancient Greek civilization.
This refers to the highest mark left by the sea on the land or by a river when it floods.
See also: mark
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary

high-water mark

The acme of achievement. The term alludes to the mark left when a body of water reaches its highest level, as in a flood. By the early nineteenth century it had been transferred to the peak of other events or accomplishments, as in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s statement in 1856, about William Wordsworth: “‘The Ode on Immortality’ is the high-water mark which the intellect has reached in this age.”
See also: mark
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • get off the mark
  • mark my word
  • mark my word(s)
  • mark my words
  • mark off
  • beauty mark
  • mark (someone or something) down as (something)
  • punctuate
  • punctuate (something) with (something)
  • punctuate with
References in periodicals archive
The incentive fees are usually subject to hurdle rate and high-water mark provisions.
And as Europe's low-cost flood reaches what analysts are predicting will be a high-water mark in 2004, it's worth marking how dynamically even statist societies can react when given the chance--and wondering how the United States, with its 19-year head start, has squandered its lead in airline innovation.
"This is the high-water mark for TARDEC for congressional adds," said Richard E.
With the release David Cronenberg's Spider and Denys Arcand's Les Invasions barbares, two outstanding films by our best directors (both of which appeared on the recent TIFF list of the top Canadian films of all time), a record four films that broke the $5-million bar at the domestic box office (Seraphin, Seducing Doctor Lewis, Doctor Lewis, Les Invasions barbares and Mambo Italiano), significant wins at Cannes (Best Screenplay and Best Actress for Les Invasions barbares) and Canada's second Oscar[R] for a fictional feature (Best Foreign-Language Film for the aforementioned Les Invasions), 2003 will go down as a high-water mark for future generations to match.
His commentary for the BBC is widely seen as setting a high-water mark in the history of British broadcasting.
The deposed front man spent a good part of the '80s--DAM's ostensible high-water mark, popwise, but also its aesthetic nadir--in and out of psychiatric institutions.
The policy locks in the contract's high-water mark to determine annuitization value.
Whatever their short-term legal fate, the San Francisco weddings mark a new high-water mark in one of the most fast-paced cultural tsunamis America has seen." Rich also noted that "by the time the conventions roll around this summer, gay marriages are likely to be a civic fact in Boston," where the Democratic Convention will be held.
Her career hit the high-water mark after she moved to America with hunky actor boyfriend Jason Stratham, 30.
Department of Justice, is a new high-water mark at New Egypt in terms of security investments.
Another high-water mark for karaoke was in 1985, when an entrepreneur in Okayama Prefecture, western Japan, got his hands on an old shipping container and fixed it up into tiny private cubicles.
The SMMT figures, contained in its world automotive statistics for 2002, also showed that 1972 was also a high-water mark for American car production.
By the turn of the century, the graduation rate had dropped 7 percentage points from its high-water mark of 77 percent in 1969.
The Depression was this country's high-water mark for poverty, unemployment, and despair, and tens of millions of out-of-work and down-on-their-luck Americans recognized their own plight in Steinbeck's saga about dirt farmers scrapping for a job and a meal.
The Welsh restrictions mean that it will be illegal to use lead shot, on or over any area below the high-water mark; on or over some 20 named sites of special scientific interest (SSSI), or for any wild bird included in Schedule 2 to the Regulations namely ducks, geese, coot and moorhen.