{
  "id": "knock-on-effect.stacked",
  "term": "knock on effect",
  "sense": "stacked",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 16,
  "arena": "linguistic",
  "domain": "EmergenceLexicon",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A cause that sets a change in motion which crosses a wall only because each following cause was already near its own wall, and none were maintained against drift.",
  "folk_gloss": "One event causes another, which causes another, and so on.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "cause.reason",
      "drift.aimless",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "wall.range-end",
      "parameter.condition"
    ],
    "interaction": "stacked dependency",
    "novel_properties": [
      "cause that triggers a sequence of pre-stressed changes"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In 2008, Lehman Brothers' collapse triggered a chain of bank failures across Europe and the U.S. due to unmet collateral thresholds.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake shifted Earth's axis by 10 cm, altering day length and affecting GPS satellite synchronization.",
      "domain": "geophysics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 1990 Hubble Space Telescope launch revealed a 2.2-micron mirror flaw, delaying science operations for three years.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "knock on effect"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — stacked dependency"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-knock-on-effect.stacked"
}