{
  "id": "mail.postal",
  "term": "mail",
  "sense": "postal",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 8,
  "arena": "lexicon",
  "domain": "english",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a piece of information that is carried through post",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "piece.portion",
      "message.information",
      "post.mail",
      "carrying.transporting",
      "information.knowledge"
    ],
    "interaction": "the information piece is moved by post while remaining under control and in contact during transit",
    "novel_properties": [
      "delivered information",
      "physically transported message",
      "controlled transit of content"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The U.S. Postal Service delivered 146 billion pieces of mail in 2022.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "A handwritten letter from Alan Turing to Joan Clarke was carried by Royal Mail in 1941.",
      "domain": "history"
    },
    {
      "text": "Parcel tracking systems like DHL's record the location of mail every 20 minutes during transit.",
      "domain": "computing"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "message.information",
      "note": "mail is a type of message",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "mail",
    "mailed",
    "mailing",
    "mails"
  ],
  "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": "components",
      "note": "Added missing constitutive concepts: carrying.transporting and information.knowledge. Definition remained correct as-is."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-mail.postal"
}