{
  "id": "ambush.attack",
  "term": "ambush",
  "sense": "attack",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 11,
  "arena": "conflict",
  "domain": "military",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "An attack from outside the range within which a thing can be, where the parts persist though the thing ends.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "window.range",
      "wall.range-end",
      "parameter.condition",
      "persist.continue",
      "change.process",
      "outside.spatial",
      "part.relation",
      "range.spatial"
    ],
    "interaction": "The condition of a thing defines a range within which it persists; when an event occurs from outside that range, it causes a change that ends the thing even though its parts continue.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "sudden termination from beyond bounds",
      "persistence of parts after whole ends",
      "spatial trespass enabling change"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. supply convoys were ambushed near Nasiriyah by insurgents outside the expected combat zone.",
      "domain": "military"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 1996 Mount Everest disaster began when climbers were ambushed by a sudden storm above the safe weather window.",
      "domain": "expedition"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 2017, the NotPetya malware ambushed global shipping systems by exploiting a software update beyond normal network boundaries.",
      "domain": "computing"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "ambush",
    "ambushed",
    "ambushes",
    "ambushing"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "retrofit:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "Sample/we-already-had-the-words.md"
    ],
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "factual",
      "note": "The original record omitted several constitutive concepts that the definition implicitly relies on, such as change.process, outside.spatial, part.relation, range.spatial, and though.conjunction. These"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-ambush.attack"
}