{
  "id": "whole.complete",
  "term": "whole",
  "sense": "complete",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 3,
  "arena": "definition",
  "domain": "everyday",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "All the parts of something",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "part.relation",
      "structure.arrangement"
    ],
    "interaction": "The parts together are all the thing",
    "novel_properties": [
      "full",
      "complete"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The International Space Station maintains orbit through continuous micro-adjustments by gyroscopes and thrusters.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "The human circulatory system delivers oxygen using a network of vessels, heart, and blood working in concert.",
      "domain": "biology"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 2020 US Census aimed to count every resident to form a complete demographic picture of the nation.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "object.entity",
      "type": "is-a",
      "note": "a whole is an entity"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "basic.simple",
    "critical-mass.threshold",
    "division.process",
    "going-viral.excess",
    "greater-than-the-sum.excess",
    "groundswell.emergence",
    "in-sync.harmony",
    "missing-the-forest-for-the-trees.abstraction",
    "network-effect.threshold",
    "on-the-same-wavelength.resonance",
    "overall.general",
    "pure.state",
    "sample.material",
    "summary.text",
    "union.group",
    "word-of-mouth.excess"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "whole",
    "wholes"
  ],
  "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-whole.complete"
}