{
  "id": "death-by-a-thousand-cuts.drift",
  "term": "death by a thousand cuts",
  "sense": "drift",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 15,
  "arena": "everyday language",
  "domain": "linguistics",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "drift that narrows the window until a parameter that was safe crosses a wall because maintenance did not increase as the range decreased",
  "folk_gloss": "many small injuries that together cause failure",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "drift.aimless",
      "window.range",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "parameter.condition",
      "wall.range-end"
    ],
    "interaction": "noun",
    "novel_properties": [
      "emergence.novel_properties"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2019 Boeing 737 MAX crashes followed repeated MCAS adjustments that narrowed safe flight parameters without corresponding maintenance or training updates.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Aral Sea shrank by 90% after decades of unchecked irrigation diversions reduced inflow while maintenance of water-sharing agreements decayed.",
      "domain": "environment"
    },
    {
      "text": "MySpace lost user engagement share to Facebook as feature bloat narrowed performance margins without scaling infrastructure upkeep.",
      "domain": "computing"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "death by a thousand cuts"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — drift nobody noticed"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-death-by-a-thousand-cuts.drift"
}