{
  "id": "western.directional",
  "term": "western",
  "sense": "directional",
  "pos": "adjective",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 16,
  "arena": "western",
  "domain": "everyday",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "the part of a place that is toward the west",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "west.direction",
      "toward.spatial",
      "part.relation",
      "space.extent"
    ],
    "interaction": "west direction together with toward spatial marks the side of a place that faces west",
    "novel_properties": [
      "orientation toward sunset",
      "relative positioning in a region",
      "asymmetric spatial division"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The sun sets behind the Sierra Nevada mountains as seen from downtown Los Angeles.",
      "domain": "geography"
    },
    {
      "text": "The western wing of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor building faced the Pacific Ocean during the 2011 tsunami.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 1849, gold seekers boarded ships in San Francisco bound for the western edge of the Australian goldfields.",
      "domain": "history"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "western"
  ],
  "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": "components",
      "note": "Added part.relation and space.extent to components since they are foundational to the meaning of 'western' as a directional part within a spatial context. Definition remained correct and unchanged."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-western.directional"
}