{
  "id": "papering-over-the-cracks.upkeep",
  "term": "papering over the cracks",
  "sense": "upkeep",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 15,
  "arena": "invisible maintenance",
  "domain": "social systems, engineering, relationships",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "Maintenance that covers a growing drift by holding the surface state, while the underlying parameter moves toward a wall.",
  "folk_gloss": "Trying to fix problems in a way that only hides them, not solves them.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "drift.aimless",
      "wall.range-end",
      "parameter.condition",
      "surface.exterior"
    ],
    "interaction": "The surface is held while the parameter beneath changes without correction, narrowing the window until maintenance can no longer reach the new state.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "The thing appears intact but is drifting toward collapse."
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The Fukushima Daiichi reactors required constant cooling, but backup power failures after the 2011 tsunami papered over the cracks until meltdowns began.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "Lehman Brothers' 2008 balance sheet showed stability while repo accounting masked growing leverage.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "Windows XP continued running on many ATMs past support end, hiding OS decay with patches until hardware failed.",
      "domain": "computing"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "paper over the cracks",
    "papering over the cracks"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — invisible maintenance"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-papering-over-the-cracks.upkeep"
}