{
  "id": "mean.signify",
  "term": "mean",
  "sense": "signify",
  "pos": "verb",
  "status": "draft",
  "level": 9,
  "arena": "lexicon",
  "domain": "common",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "to be a significance of a thing",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "meaning.significance",
      "state.condition"
    ],
    "interaction": "The significance together with a condition lets a word indicate what is intended.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "intentional reference",
      "semantic mapping"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The word 'kerfuffle' means a commotion, as used in UK parliamentary debates in 2019 to describe the Brexit negotiations.",
      "domain": "language"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 2020, the International Prototype of the Kilogram was replaced because its physical mass no longer signified the standard due to atomic decay.",
      "domain": "metrology"
    },
    {
      "text": "The dove image on Greenpeace's logo means peaceful environmental activism, established at its founding in 1971.",
      "domain": "organizations"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "action.deed",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    },
    {
      "id": "meaning.significance",
      "note": "abstracts",
      "type": "abstracts"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "art.creative",
    "concise.linguistic",
    "express.communication",
    "heart.organ",
    "ideas.cognitive",
    "important.significance",
    "language.communication",
    "overshoot.dynamics",
    "reason.causal",
    "sign.symbolic",
    "statement.communication",
    "story.narrative",
    "terms.language"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "mean",
    "meaning",
    "means",
    "meant"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-mean.signify"
}