{
  "id": "lake.geographic",
  "term": "lake",
  "sense": "geographic",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 16,
  "arena": "physical",
  "domain": "earth",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "A region of space containing water and enclosed by a boundary that holds the water within.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "water.liquid",
      "region.spatial",
      "boundary.limit",
      "liquid.state",
      "limit.boundary"
    ],
    "interaction": "The boundary retains the liquid water within the spatial region, preventing dispersal.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "contained body of water",
      "stable water boundary interface",
      "persistent spatial localization of water"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Lake Superior contains 12,100 cubic kilometers of water within its rocky shoreline boundary.",
      "domain": "geography"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Aral Sea shrank by 90% after rivers feeding it were diverted for irrigation.",
      "domain": "environment"
    },
    {
      "text": "Lake Vostok remains liquid under 4 kilometers of Antarctic ice due to geothermal pressure.",
      "domain": "geophysics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "region.spatial",
      "type": "is-a",
      "note": "a lake is a type of spatial region"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "lake",
    "lakes"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "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": "Definition incorrectly omitted constitutive roles of liquid.state and limit.boundary; these are necessary for the water to remain as a stable, bounded body. Original definition leaned on unstated conc"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-lake.geographic"
}