{
  "id": "foundation.structural",
  "term": "foundation",
  "sense": "structural",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 11,
  "arena": "everyday",
  "domain": "common usage",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "a window whose walls set the walls of every window above it",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "parameter.condition",
      "window.range",
      "wall.range-end",
      "above.spatial",
      "sets.grouped"
    ],
    "interaction": "The walls of a foundation window constrain the potential positions of walls in all higher windows.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "hierarchical constraint",
      "vertical dependency",
      "structural precedence"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The Burj Khalifa's reinforced concrete mat foundation supports 163 floors without shifting, despite Dubai's sandy soil.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement established fixed exchange rates, shaping global finance for decades.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Linux kernel's initial release in 1991 provided the base for over 80% of current web servers.",
      "domain": "computing"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "base.foundation",
      "type": "is-a",
      "note": "foundation is a type of base"
    },
    {
      "id": "part.relation",
      "type": "abstracts",
      "note": "it abstracts the idea of a part"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "foundation",
    "foundations"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "Sample/hundred-words-six-terms.md"
    ],
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "factual",
      "note": "Definition originally leaned on spatial and logical concepts not listed in components; components updated to include 'above.spatial', 'every.quantifier', 'sets.grouped', and 'windows.opening' to align"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-foundation.structural"
}