Word of the Day

: October 23, 2023

threshold

noun THRESH-hohld

What It Means

A threshold is a piece of wood, metal, or stone that lies across the base of a doorway. In figurative use, threshold refers to the point or level at which something begins or changes.

// As he stepped across the threshold a chorus of friends yelled "surprise!"

// If your income rises above a certain threshold, your tax rate also rises.

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threshold in Context

"First out of the kitchen was a plate of five breaded chicken tenders bathed in Nashville-style hot sauce. ... And these tenders indeed packed a wallop, although the spiciness never quite reached my threshold of pain." — Grub Scout, The Knoxville (Tennessee) News-Sentinel, 30 Mar. 2022

Did You Know?

Whenever you leave your home, walk from one room to another, or enter a building, you are crossing a threshold—that is, the horizontal floor piece that you cross over whenever you move through a doorway. But the earliest uses of threshold refer to a different type of boundary: an Old English translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae uses the word in a sentence about how the sea was made so that it didn’t overstep the "threshold," or boundary, of the earth. In this translation, which was written around 888, threshold appears as þeorscwold (that first letter is called thorn and it was used in Old English and Middle English to indicate the sounds produced by th in thin and this). The origins of this Old English word are not known, though it is believed to be related to the Old English word threscan, from which we get the words thresh, meaning "to separate seed from (a harvested plant) using a machine or tool" and thrash, meaning, among other things, "to beat soundly with or as if with a stick or whip." But there's nothing in the historical record that directly ties threshing to the threshold.