{
  "id": "ripple-effect.stacked",
  "term": "ripple effect",
  "sense": "stacked",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 12,
  "arena": "everyday language",
  "domain": "emergence",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "a single cause that moves through a chain of dependencies, each next one poised to change only because the prior one did, revealing how much has already aligned for propagation.",
  "folk_gloss": "a small event that causes a series of further events, one after another.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "cause.reason",
      "follows.sequential",
      "dependence.condition",
      "interaction.process",
      "change.process"
    ],
    "interaction": "stacked dependency",
    "novel_properties": [
      "stacked dependency"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers triggered global credit markets to freeze within 72 hours.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "A single power-line fault in Ohio cascaded into the Northeast Blackout of 2003, cutting electricity to 50 million people.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 2011 Tohoku earthquake shifted Japan's coastline by 4 meters, altering tides globally.",
      "domain": "geophysics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "ripple effect"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — stacked dependency"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-ripple-effect.stacked"
}