{
  "id": "out-of-touch.stale",
  "term": "out of touch",
  "sense": "stale",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 18,
  "domain": "model and reality",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "a model still correct about a range that has since moved, separated from the present not by any wall but by the quiet lapse of re-reading.",
  "folk_gloss": "no longer knowing what things are really like now",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "model.representation",
      "range.spatial",
      "leave.movement",
      "time.dimension",
      "read.information",
      "new.recent",
      "drift.aimless",
      "wall.range-end"
    ],
    "interaction": "No exclusion is at work: the range moved at its own pace, the re-readings lapsed at theirs, and the model preserves a faithful picture of a world that is now somewhere else.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "separation without a wall",
      "fidelity to a vanished range",
      "lapse rather than refusal"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The executive's instincts are excellent for the market of fifteen years ago.",
      "domain": "business"
    },
    {
      "text": "An emigrant speaks the slang of the year they left.",
      "domain": "language"
    },
    {
      "text": "The menu is not wrong; it is a correct menu from another decade.",
      "domain": "everyday"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "out of touch"
  ],
  "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-out-of-touch.stale"
}