{
  "id": "reply.communication",
  "term": "reply",
  "sense": "communication",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 9,
  "arena": "reply",
  "domain": "communication",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a message that is sent after one receives a message",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "message.information",
      "receive.communication",
      "send.communication",
      "time.dimension"
    ],
    "interaction": "When a message is received and then a new message is sent in response, a reply is produced.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "response dependency",
      "temporal ordering",
      "sequential linkage"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In 2023, NASA received a signal from Voyager 1 after a 20-hour delay, then transmitted a corrective command.",
      "domain": "space"
    },
    {
      "text": "After the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak, WikiLeaks posted responses to incoming media inquiries for three weeks.",
      "domain": "politics"
    },
    {
      "text": "When the thermostat detects a temperature drop, it sends a reply signal to activate the furnace.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "message.information",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "replied",
    "replies",
    "reply",
    "replying"
  ],
  "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 'time.dimension' as it is essential for capturing the 'after' relation in the definition. The original record omitted a fundamental constituent, making the emergence account incomplete."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-reply.communication"
}