{
  "id": "north.direction",
  "term": "north",
  "sense": "direction",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 13,
  "arena": "north.direction",
  "domain": "direction",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "the side of a place that is up on a map",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "side.surface",
      "map.spatial",
      "space.extent"
    ],
    "interaction": "the side and the map together orient relative to the top of a spatial representation",
    "novel_properties": [
      "directional orientation",
      "relative upness",
      "spatial reference"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The North Pole is marked at the top of the National Geographic Society's official world map.",
      "domain": "cartography"
    },
    {
      "text": "Migrating Arctic terns navigate toward the northernmost point of Greenland during their annual flight from Antarctica.",
      "domain": "biology"
    },
    {
      "text": "In GPS units used by the 2020 Dakar Rally, 'north' is the default upward orientation on the dashboard display.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "south.direction",
      "note": "contrasts-with",
      "type": "contrasts-with"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "left.direction",
    "west.direction"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "north",
    "norths"
  ],
  "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": "factual",
      "note": "added space.extent as it is foundational to the concept of north as a direction on a map; without space, there is no 'up'. Definition was factually correct but incomplete in its components."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-north.direction"
}