A threshold
26 December 2022
Threshold is a word that English inherited from Proto-Germanic with cognates in German, Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish. The compound comes from two roots. The thresh- comes from a verb meaning to tread or step; in Present-Day English to thresh a cereal crop is to separate the grain from the chaff by trampling or beating it. The -hold comes from a Germanic suffix that designates a tool or instrument. We also see the suffix in the word needle, but in the case of threshold metathesis—a reordering of the phonemes—has occurred, with the / l / and the / d / swapping places.
So, a threshold is a thing that is stepped upon, that is the bottom sill of a doorway or entrance to a building.
Here it appears in the Old English translation of Exodus 12:22:
& dyppað isopan sceaf on ðam blode ðe is on ðam ðrexwolde, & sprengaþ on ðæt oferslege & on ægðrum gedyre, he forgæð þæs huses duru & ne læt slean nanne man on eowrum husum.
(& dip a sheaf of hyssop in the blood that is on the threshold, & sprinkle [it] on the lintel & on each doorpost, he will pass by the door of these houses & will let no one be slain in your houses.)
Most present-day English versions translate this as basin or bowl instead of threshold, which makes more sense in context. The Hebrew word saph can mean either threshold or basin. The Latin Vulgate translates it as limen, or threshold, and the Old English version is translating from the Latin.
Threshold can also be used figuratively to mean a starting point or a border to be crossed. This figurative use also dates to Old English. From the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, in a passage where Herebald is speaking of his master, John of Beverley:
Forðon þe he mæc, þæs ðe ic cweðe, from deaðes þirscwalde wæs acegende, & mec to lifes wege mid his gebede & blætsunge gelædde.
(Because he, so to speak, recalled me from death’s threshold, & led me to life’s way with his prayers and blessings.)
Þirscwalde (threshold) translates limine in Bede’s original Latin.
There is a specious bit of internet lore floating about that badly misstates the origin of threshold. I haven’t seen it circulating lately, but it being the internet such things never die. It claims that “thresh” was placed on the bare floor and a block of wood, the threshold, would hold the thresh in when the door was opened. Presumably, whoever invented this explanation misunderstood the action of threshing wheat and assumed that thresh was straw. It’s a reasonable off-the-cuff guess if one does not know etymology or the meaning of thresh, but it is just plain wrong.
Sources:
Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, eds. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969, 5.6, 466.
———. The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, part 1, vol. 2. Thomas Miller, trans. and ed. Early English Text Society, OS 96. London: Oxford UP, 1891, 5.6, 398.
Exodus 12:22. Crawford, S.J., ed. The Old English Version of the Heptateuch. Early English Text Society, OS 160. London: Oxford UP, 1969, 245.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2021, s.v. threshold, n., thresh, v.; September 2003, s.v. needle, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. bold, n.
Photo credit: Palagiri Rama krishna Reddy, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.