{
  "id": "example.illustration",
  "term": "example",
  "sense": "illustration",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 10,
  "arena": "common",
  "domain": "semantic",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a thing that is used to show a rule",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "items.object",
      "law.rule",
      "rules.social",
      "show.visual",
      "use.application"
    ],
    "interaction": "an object is used in a way that makes a rule visible",
    "novel_properties": [
      "demonstration of pattern",
      "exemplary instance",
      "illustrative application"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The International Space Station maintains orbit through periodic reboosts by visiting spacecraft.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "E. coli bacteria replicate DNA semi-conservatively, demonstrating the rule of complementary base pairing.",
      "domain": "biology"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) 8 style guide governs code formatting across the Python open-source community.",
      "domain": "computing"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "items.object",
      "type": "is-a",
      "note": "example is a kind of item"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "sample.material"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "example",
    "examples"
  ],
  "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": "factual",
      "note": "Added missing constitutive concepts: rules.social (as the context where rules are shown), show.visual (to capture 'show' as an act of making evident), and use.application (to ground 'use'). Definition"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-example.illustration"
}