{
  "id": "whose-time-has-come.threshold",
  "term": "whose time has come",
  "sense": "threshold",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 16,
  "arena": "social emergence",
  "domain": "windows opening and closing",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A parameter has drifted to a wall where a new thing can persist, and the model that denied its possibility is now too late to stop it.",
  "folk_gloss": "Something is now ready to happen or be accepted.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "parameter.condition",
      "drift.aimless",
      "wall.range-end",
      "model.representation",
      "persist.continue"
    ],
    "interaction": "A change in conditions has silently crossed a threshold, making what was once impossible now inevitable — not because of force, but because resistance can no longer be maintained.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "The phrase reports inevitability after latency, not causation."
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In 2008, Iceland's financial sector collapsed when debt reached 10 times GDP, breaching systemic resilience limits.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in 2002 after decades of warming pushed Antarctic summer temperatures above -5°C.",
      "domain": "geophysics"
    },
    {
      "text": "IPv6 adoption surged globally after 2010 as IPv4 addresses exhausted, hitting the limit of 32-bit addressing space.",
      "domain": "computing"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "whose time has come"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — windows opening and closing"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-whose-time-has-come.threshold"
}