We explain what a threshold is, its meaning in architecture, as a limit, as a minimum level and its multiple meanings.
What is a threshold?
The word threshold has very different meanings in Spanish, linked especially to space and limits. In general, the thresholds are the step, entry or limit that indicates the beginning of something. To enter a room, for example, we must cross the door threshold, that is, the space that the door normally occupies and that marks the end of one environment and the beginning of another.
The word threshold comes from Latin limits“limit” or “extreme”, a word that was used to refer to the terminus of a house or building. The original term in Spanish was thresholdsince it is linked to the light, that is, to the fire, the so-called “heat of the home.” With use and phonetic modifications, the word lost its initial letter, due to the superposition of the consonant «l» in “el lumbral”. So it ended up becoming a threshold.
In architecture, the threshold is the beam that supports the wall above an entrance, acting as a lintel. or architrave. That is, let's imagine two beams or structures acting as columns or pillars, on which one is placed horizontally (the lintel): that empty rectangular space through which we can enter the room is, precisely, the threshold.
However, the word threshold is used metaphorically for many other areas of knowledge and life, always with its meaning as the starting point of something, or the minimum point of something. Some examples of this below:
- The underwater threshold It is a deep point in underwater topography that marks the end of one underwater basin and the beginning of another.
- The pain threshold It is the minimum point of intensity at which a stimulus is registered by the human body as pain. This threshold can vary depending on the person, and the “lower” it is, the more easily a person will register a stimulus as painful, that is, the more pain they will feel more often.
- The threshold of perception It is the minimum level that a signal must have in order to be registered and recognized by a system, whether computer, physical or the human body itself. For example, the hearing threshold is the minimum amount of sound that the human body is capable of registering naturally.
- The poverty line The poverty line is the level of minimum economic income that a person requires to satisfy their minimum needs and not be in a situation of poverty. This threshold is defined according to different variables and can be very different from one country to another.
- The profitability thresholdequilibrium point or “dead” point is the minimum number of goods that a commercial organization must sell in order to equate production costs and sales income, that is, so that the profit is zero. At this point, neither income nor losses are produced.
- The electoral threshold or electoral floor is, in politics, the minimum proportion of votes that a candidate or an electoral list requires to be taken into account in the distribution of seats in parliament or in the corresponding legislative entity. That is, the minimum number of votes to be considered an active political force.
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References
- “Threshold” in the Dictionary of the language of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Threshold (disambiguation)” on Wikipedia.
- “Threshold (perception)” on Wikipedia.
- “Threshold (architecture)” on Wikipedia.
- “Threshold (bathymetry)” on Wikipedia.
- “Lintel, threshold” in Minutias del Lenguaje (Economic Culture Fund) by José G. Moreno de Alba.
- “Etymology of Threshold” in Etymologies of Chile.net.
