{
  "id": "contract.legal",
  "term": "contract",
  "sense": "legal",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 14,
  "arena": "lexicon",
  "domain": "everyday",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a written agreement that creates a rule obligating others",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "agreement.social",
      "law.rule",
      "write.communication",
      "others.distinct-entities",
      "create.production",
      "rules.social"
    ],
    "interaction": "the written agreement creates a rule that obligates the parties",
    "novel_properties": [
      "enforceable obligation",
      "formal bindingness",
      "legal effect"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was signed by multiple parties to end decades of conflict in Northern Ireland.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "Apple's 2011 contract with Foxconn specified production timelines and labor conditions for iPhone manufacturing.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The U.S. Constitution's Contract Clause, in Article I, Section 10, restricts states from impairing contractual obligations.",
      "domain": "law"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "agreement.social",
      "type": "is-a",
      "note": "a contract is a kind of agreement"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "contract",
    "contracted",
    "contracting",
    "contracts"
  ],
  "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 create.production and rules.social to align components with the definition's claim of creating a rule that obligates. Definition kept concise and natural; no factual error required correction."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-contract.legal"
}