threshold.
The lowermost part of a doorway that one crosses to enter; a sill.
Meaning & usage
The lowermost part of a doorway that one crosses to enter; a sill.
An entrance; the door or gate of a house.
Any end or boundary.
The outset of something; the point of entry, or the beginning of an action.
on the threshold of maturity
The start of the landing area of a runway.
The quantitative point at which an action is triggered, especially a lower limit.
The wage or salary at which income tax becomes due.
The point where one is mentally or physically vulnerable in response to a provocation or to other nuisances.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English threschwolde, threscholde, from Old English þresċold, þerxold, þrexwold (“doorsill, entryway”), from Proto-Germanic *þreskudlaz, *þreskūþlijaz, *þreskwaþluz, from Proto-Germanic *þreskaną, *þreskwaną (“to thresh, (originally) to tread”), from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to rub, turn”). Cognate with Low German Drüssel (“threshold”), dialectal German Drischaufel, Drissufle, Trüschübel (“threshold”), Danish tærskel (“threshold”), Norwegian Bokmål terskel (“threshold”), Norwegian Nynorsk treskald (“threshold”), Swedish tröskel (“threshold”), dialectal Swedish träskvald (“threshold”), Icelandic þröskuldur (“threshold”). Pronunciations such as “thresh-hold” are un-etymological and result from analogy with hold.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.