threshold

• n. 入り口; しきい値; 始まり; 限界; 閾値.

古英語のthrescold、threshold、threscan、to treadが語源で、語源的にはthreshと同じ。 後世の綴りは、関連語から派生したholdの影響で低俗化した可能性がある。

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 tre?keti ‘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 trescold, t?rscwold, terxold, 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 trescan (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 treskjoldr, Swedish tr?skel, 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 .

核兵器の使用を高めるための支援への一般的な移行が始まっていることは明らかだ。

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

もうすぐ天文学の新紀元を迎える。

3.Here she is on the threshold of womanhood.

今、彼女は成年期に入る。

4.She stood hesitating on the threshold .

彼女は入り口に立って、ためらっていた。

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

私はもうあなたの家には入りません。