threshold

• n. 入口；门槛；开始；极限；临界值

词态变化

中文词源

来自古英语 threscold,门槛，来自 threscan,踩踏，词源同 thresh.后拼写可能受 hold 影响俗化， 引申诸相关词义。

英文词源

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.

双语例句

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

显然大家已普遍开始转向支持提高核武器使用的门槛了。

来自柯林斯例句

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

我们很快就将迎来天文学的新纪元。

来自柯林斯例句

3. Here she is on the threshold of womanhood.

现在她将迈入成年期。

来自柯林斯例句

4. She stood hesitating on the threshold.

她站在门口，犹豫不决。

来自《权威词典》

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

我再也不进你的家门了.

来自《简明英汉词典》