{
  "id": "high-horse.mounted",
  "term": "high horse",
  "sense": "mounted",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 20,
  "domain": "model and reality",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "a self-model held at an elevation where others must look up to read it, and from which the dismount is demanded from below rather than chosen from the saddle.",
  "folk_gloss": "an attitude of superiority you have to be talked down from",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "above.spatial",
      "high.spatial",
      "others.distinct-entities",
      "look.visual",
      "read.information",
      "hold.physical",
      "maintenance.upkeep"
    ],
    "interaction": "The elevation is a placement, not an error: the model is held above the range others read from, which fixes the reading angle for everyone; and because the others hold the angle, they also hold the only demand that ends it.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "reading angle imposed on others",
      "externally demanded dismount",
      "placement rather than error"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The reviewer's comments are all correct, and the team's request is not that they be wrong but that they be made from a desk.",
      "domain": "workplace"
    },
    {
      "text": "The lecture ends when the teenager says come down, not when the parent finishes.",
      "domain": "family"
    },
    {
      "text": "The sanctioning country discovers that lifting sanctions is negotiated with the sanctioned.",
      "domain": "diplomacy"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "get off your high horse",
    "high horse",
    "on your high horse"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-08-22",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — keeping reality out"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-high-horse.mounted"
}