{
  "id": "second.temporal",
  "term": "second",
  "sense": "temporal",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 4,
  "arena": "second",
  "domain": "time.measure",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a regular portion of time",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "time.dimension",
      "regular.frequency",
      "portion.share"
    ],
    "interaction": "time and regular together with a portion make a distinct repeat",
    "novel_properties": [
      "discrete unit",
      "standard measure",
      "repeatable interval"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The International Atomic Time standard defines the second by 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation from a cesium-133 atom.",
      "domain": "physics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Greenwich Time Signal, known as the 'pips,' has marked the precise start of each second on BBC radio since 1924.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "The HP 5061A atomic clock, deployed in 1960, stabilized the definition of the second to within one part in 10^11.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "time.dimension",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "cusp.threshold",
    "double.quantity",
    "february.calendar",
    "minutes.temporal",
    "redundancy.engineering",
    "third.ordinal",
    "tuesday.temporal"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "second",
    "seconds"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "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-second.temporal"
}