{
  "id": "email.digital",
  "term": "email",
  "sense": "digital",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 9,
  "arena": "email",
  "domain": "communication",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a piece of information that is carried by a device through an online web to another device",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "piece.portion",
      "information.knowledge",
      "device.tool",
      "web.structure",
      "online.digital",
      "carrying.transporting"
    ],
    "interaction": "the device uses the online web to carry the piece of information from one device to another",
    "novel_properties": [
      "asymmetric transmission",
      "directed information transfer",
      "digital addressing"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971 over ARPANET from one PDP-10 computer to another.",
      "domain": "computing"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 2010, WikiLeaks transmitted classified U.S. diplomatic cables to journalists via encrypted email attachments.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "A Tesla Model S receives over-the-air software updates via email-like packets routed through cellular data networks.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "information.knowledge",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "newsletter.communication"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "email",
    "emailed",
    "emailing",
    "emails"
  ],
  "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": "definition",
      "note": "Added carrying.transporting (L5) as a constitutive component since the act of transporting is essential to the definition of email. The definition correctly describes the phenomenon and already implie"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-email.digital"
}