threshold
noun
Simple meaning
The entrance through which you enter or leave a room or building.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
threhshohldSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈθɹɛʃoʊld
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The entrance (the space in a wall) through which you enter or leave a room or building; the space that a door can close
by extension
An entrance; the door or gate of a house.
The lowermost part of a doorway that one crosses to enter; a sill.
figurative
The outset of something; the point of entry, or the beginning of an action.
by extension
Any end or boundary.
The point where one is mentally or physically vulnerable in response to a provocation or to other nuisances.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The lowermost part of a doorway that one crosses to enter; a sill.
Used this way, threshold is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- doorsill , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use threshold
- “On the threshold of manhood.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A logic element that performs a threshold operation.
A function that takes the value 1 if a specified function of the arguments exceeds a given threshold and 0 otherwise.
A logic element that performs a threshold operation.
The intensity level that is just barely perceptible.
An operation performed on operands in order to obtain the value of a threshold function.
The smallest change in stimulation that a person can detect.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: entrance (the space in a wall) through which you enter
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.