high water mark
n.— «Finally, most hedge funds have something called a high water mark. It requires hedge fund managers to make investors whole before they can start collecting their 20 percent of the profits—regardless of how long that takes. Hedge fund managers don’t get to start from scratch every Jan. 1 the way their mutual fund brethren do.» —“Running a Hedge Fund Is Harder Than It Looks on TV” by Andrew Ross SOrkin New York Times Aug. 19, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A retronym is a word coined to distinguish something new from an older, more generic version, such as electric guitar or clock radio. A couple of new retronyms are fine water, or “unprocessed water that reflects a region’s terroir” and water...
Ribbon fall. Gallery forest. You won’t find terms like these in most dictionaries, but they and hundreds like them are discussed by famous writers in the book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. The book is an intriguing collection...