{
  "id": "direction.spatial",
  "term": "direction",
  "sense": "spatial",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 13,
  "arena": "EmergenceLexicon",
  "domain": "direction",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a line that a thing points to as it goes",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "line.geometric",
      "points.location",
      "go.movement",
      "point-of-no-return.irreversible"
    ],
    "interaction": "the line and the point together form where the thing goes, with movement establishing an irreversible transition along that path",
    "novel_properties": [
      "oriented path",
      "irreversible progression",
      "directed intent"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The Voyager 1 probe travels away from the Sun at 17 km/s, maintaining its course since 1977.",
      "domain": "spaceflight"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Mississippi River flows south from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico, carving its path over millennia.",
      "domain": "geography"
    },
    {
      "text": "A gyroscope in the Hubble Space Telescope orients along a fixed axis, guiding observations for years.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "line.geometric",
      "note": "is-a relationship",
      "type": "is-a"
    },
    {
      "id": "points.location",
      "note": "abstracts relationship",
      "type": "abstracts"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "across.spatial",
    "against.opposition",
    "below.spatial",
    "chance.random",
    "comfortable.central",
    "east.spatial",
    "front.spatial",
    "left.direction",
    "orientation.spatial",
    "round.shape",
    "toward.spatial",
    "trend.directional",
    "turn.rotational",
    "west.direction"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "direction",
    "directions"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "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 point-of-no-return.irreversible to components since the definition implies a committed course, which requires irreversibility beyond mere movement or location. Kept definition unchanged as it ac"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-direction.spatial"
}