threshold

• n. 入口；門檻；開始；極限；臨界值

來自古英語 threscold,門檻，來自 threscan,踩踏，詞源同 thresh.後拚寫可能受 hold 影響俗化， 引申諸相關詞義。

threshold

threshold: [OE] The first element of threshold is identical with English thresh [OE]. This seems to go back ultimately to a prehistoric source that denoted ‘making noise’ (the apparently related Old Church Slavonic tresku meant ‘crash’, and Lithuanian has trešketi ‘crack, rattle’). By the time it reached Germanic, as *thresk-, it was probably being used for ‘stamp the feet noisily’, and it is this secondary notion of ‘stamping’ or ‘treading’ that lies behind threshold – as being something you ‘tread’ on as you go through a door. Thresh by the time it reached English had specialized further still, to mean ‘separate grains from husks by stamping’, and this later evolved to simply ‘separate grains from husks’. Thrash [OE], which originated as a variant of thresh, has taken the further semantic step to ‘beat, hit’.

It is not known where the second element of threshold came from.
=> thrash, thresh

threshold (n.)

Old English þrescold, þærscwold, þerxold, etc., "door-sill, point of entering," of uncertain origin and probably much altered by folk-etymology. The first element probably is related to Old English þrescan (see thresh), either in its current sense of "thresh" or with its original sense of "tread, trample." Second element has been much transformed in all the Germanic languages, suggesting its literal sense was lost even in ancient times. In English it probably has been altered to conform to hold. Liberman (Oxford University Press blog, Feb. 11, 2015) revives an old theory that the second element is the Proto-Germanic instrumental suffix *-thlo and the original sense of threshold was a threshing area adjacent to the living area of a house. Cognates include Old Norse þreskjoldr, Swedish tröskel, Old High German driscufli, German dialectal drischaufel. Figurative use was in Old English.

1. The consensus has clearly shifted in favour of raising the nuclear threshold.

顯然大家已普遍開始轉向支持提高核武器使用的門檻了。

來自柯林斯例句

2. We are on the threshold of a new era in astronomy.

我們很快就將迎來天文學的新紀元。

來自柯林斯例句

3. Here she is on the threshold of womanhood.

現在她將邁入成年期。

來自柯林斯例句

4. She stood hesitating on the threshold.

她站在門口，猶豫不決。

來自《權威詞典》

5. I'll never cross the threshold of your house again.

我再也不進你的家門了.

來自《簡明英漢詞典》