{
  "id": "stretched-thin.capacity",
  "term": "stretched thin",
  "sense": "capacity",
  "pos": "adjective",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 19,
  "arena": "emergence",
  "domain": "capacity and burnout",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "When energy capacity is divided so finely among tasks that each portion can barely sustain its part, and the whole is near collapse from lack of slack.",
  "folk_gloss": "Feeling pulled in too many directions at once.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "energy.capacity",
      "slack.margin",
      "capacity.size",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "window.range"
    ],
    "interaction": "When a thing is divided so finely that its parts can no longer maintain coherence.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "maintenance",
      "coherence",
      "capacity"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "California's 2020 wildfire response stretched thin as 15,000 firefighters managed 9,900 blazes across 4 million acres in three months.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "The International Space Station's power grid ran at 98% capacity for 72 hours during a solar array failure in 2019.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "Kenya's 2023 tea harvest collapsed when one worker had to cover 200 kg of leaf daily across 15 farms due to labor shortages.",
      "domain": "economics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "stretched thin"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — capacity and burnout"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-stretched-thin.capacity"
}