{
  "id": "slippery-slope.drift",
  "term": "slippery slope",
  "sense": "drift",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 15,
  "arena": "moral behavior",
  "domain": "social",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "Drift that narrows the window without crossing a wall, where each step stays within the usual range but the whole movement carries the thing toward a boundary no one is measuring.",
  "folk_gloss": "A small change that can lead to much bigger problems over time.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "drift.aimless",
      "window.range",
      "boundary.limit"
    ],
    "interaction": "passive",
    "novel_properties": [
      "unnoticed movement toward edge"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The F-35's software grew from 2 million to over 24 million lines of code across decades, complicating updates and testing.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "Amazon's same-day delivery expanded from 3 cities to 120, increasing warehouse density and delivery fleet emissions.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The human genome accumulates an average of 70 new mutations per generation, most neutral but some altering disease risk.",
      "domain": "biology"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "slippery slope"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — drift nobody noticed"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-slippery-slope.drift"
}