{
  "id": "gone-too-far.threshold",
  "term": "gone too far",
  "sense": "threshold",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 14,
  "arena": "moral judgment",
  "domain": "social",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "Crossing a wall without removing what was before, so the old state persists in pieces even as the new begins.",
  "folk_gloss": "something has progressed too much and passed a point of no return",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "wall.range-end",
      "window.range",
      "cross.symbol",
      "persist.continue",
      "change.process"
    ],
    "interaction": "crossing without removal",
    "novel_properties": [
      "remains in pieces",
      "old state persists"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "After the 2003 invasion, Baghdad's electrical grid operated at 40% capacity, unable to shed pre-war infrastructure while adopting new controls.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 2017, the AT&T network routed data through decommissioned copper lines still embedded in fiber-optic zones, causing latency spikes.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 2019 Amazon rainfire season released carbon stored for centuries, as combustion crossed ecological thresholds without erasing prior biomass layers.",
      "domain": "biology"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "go too far",
    "gone too far"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — crossing without removal"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-gone-too-far.threshold"
}