Metes and bounds is a system or method of describing land, real estate or administrative boundaries. The system has been used in Britain for many centuries, and is still used in many land jurisdictions based on British common law.

Typically the system uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe the boundaries of a parcel of land, an administrative boundary or some other human-defined boundary. The boundaries are described in a running prose style, working around the feature in sequence, from a point of beginning, returning to the same point.