{
  "id": "word-of-mouth.excess",
  "term": "word of mouth",
  "sense": "excess",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 11,
  "arena": "communication",
  "domain": "social",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A pattern that grows because its spread is the same as its reception, so the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts without central source or control.",
  "folk_gloss": "information spreading from person to person through conversation.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "pattern.regularity",
      "interaction.process",
      "whole.complete",
      "greater-than-the-sum.excess"
    ],
    "interaction": "interaction.process",
    "novel_properties": [
      "greater-than-the-sum.excess"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2011 Egyptian Revolution spread through shared stories of police brutality, bypassing state media and accelerating via personal networks.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 1989 adoption of the fax machine in Japan exceeded projections as each new user made the network more valuable to others.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 2016 Pokemon Go craze saw daily downloads double weekly for a month, driven entirely by peer excitement in parks and schools.",
      "domain": "everyday life"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "word of mouth"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — the whole exceeding its parts"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-word-of-mouth.excess"
}