{
  "id": "color.visual",
  "term": "color",
  "sense": "visual",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 8,
  "arena": "color",
  "domain": "visual",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a visual property of a thing that arises when energy interacts with the surface of matter in a regular pattern",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "matter.substance",
      "energy.capacity",
      "pattern.regularity",
      "surface.exterior",
      "interaction.process",
      "property.attribute",
      "visual.perceptual",
      "regular.frequency"
    ],
    "interaction": "the surface of matter interacts with energy, producing a regular pattern that constitutes a perceptible attribute",
    "novel_properties": [
      "perceptible hue or shade",
      "wavelength-dependent reflection",
      "surface-based visual signature"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The sky appears blue due to Rayleigh scattering of sunlight by air molecules, peaking at shorter wavelengths.",
      "domain": "physics"
    },
    {
      "text": "Chlorophyll in spinach leaves reflects green light at 550 nm while absorbing other wavelengths for photosynthesis.",
      "domain": "biology"
    },
    {
      "text": "The red hue of Mars's surface comes from iron oxide particles regularly scattering light across its dusty expanse.",
      "domain": "astronomy"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "property.attribute",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    },
    {
      "id": "black.color",
      "note": "contrasts-with",
      "type": "contrasts-with"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "blue.color",
    "brown.color",
    "gold.metal",
    "green.color",
    "red.color",
    "silver.metal",
    "yellow.color"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "color",
    "colored",
    "coloring",
    "colors"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "components",
      "note": "added missing 'regular.frequency' to components; concept of regularity over time is essential to visual color perception"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-color.visual"
}