threshold meaning

Noun: threshold  threshówld

1. The starting point for a new state or experience
   "on the threshold of manhood" 
2. The smallest detectable sensation
   - limen 
3. The entrance (the space in a wall) through which you enter or leave a room or building; the space that a door can close
   - doorway, door, room access 
4. The sill of a door; a horizontal piece of wood or stone that forms the bottom of a doorway and offers support when passing through a doorway
   - doorsill, doorstep 
5. A region marking a boundary
   - brink, verge

Derived forms: thresholds

Type of: aesthesis, beginning, bound, boundary, commencement, edge, entrance, entranceway, entrée, entry, entryway, esthesis [US], first, get-go, kickoff, offset, outset, sensation, sense datum, sense experience, sense impression, showtime, sill, start, starting time

Part of: wall

Encyclopedia: Threshold

[Architecture]
1.

A strip fastened to the floor beneath a door, usually required to cover the joint where two types of floor material meet; may provide weather protection at exterior doors. Also See doorsill.

2.

In illumination engineering, the value of physical stimulus which permits an object to be seen a specified percentage of the time with specified accuracy.

[Business]
AmE / noun [C]

(Accounting )

1

the level at which sth starts to happen, change or have an effect:

Assets had fallen below a key threshold.

Students will only pay back the loan once they have reached a particular pay threshold.

a pay/salary/wage threshold

2 = TAX THRESHOLD

[Defence]
(*) The beginning of that portion of the runway usable for landing.

[Economics]
The point at which an indexation provision becomes operative. A wage bargain, for example, might provide that wage rates should be revised in proportion to the Retail Price Index (RPI), but only if this rose by more than n per cent during the coming year. n per cent is then the threshold.

[Electronics]
1. The initial (observable) point of an ef-

fect (e.g., threshold of hearing).
2. A predetermined
point, such as of minimum current or voltage, for the start of operation of a circuit or device.

[Medicine]
n : the point at which a physiological or psychological effect begins to be produced (as the degree of stimulation of a nerve which just produces a response or the concentration of sugar in the blood at which sugar just begins to pass the barrier of the kidneys and enter the urine) ‹below the threshold of consciousness› ‹the threshold of pain› ‹a high renal clearance threshold› —called also limen

Examples

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1. there must be a threshold of thermal noise.
2. you are just on the threshold of life.
3. this country is on the threshold of prosperity.
4. to check this, we turn down the threshold level.
5. on the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latch-key.