Mearcung

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of marking out or setting the limits of a piece of land with boundary signs
2. Establishing the borders of an area by placing visible markers along its edges
3. Demarcating a territory by setting out boundary marks, an archaic practice of defining land

Etymology: Mearcung is an Old English noun formed from "mearc," meaning "boundary" or "mark," and the suffix "-ung," which turns a verb into a noun for the act or result of doing something. So it names the act of marking out a boundary, and it appears in Old English texts that describe where one piece of land ends and another begins. The root "mearc" is a Germanic word that also gave English "mark" in the sense of a boundary line or frontier. The same idea survives in "march," as in the Welsh Marches, the borderlands between England and Wales, which came into English from Old French "marche" and ultimately shares that Germanic root.