threshold

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 23, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>threshold</strong> &#149; \THRESH-hohld\&nbsp; &#149; <em>noun</em><br /> <p>A threshold is a piece of wood, metal, or stone that lies across the base of a doorway. In figurative use, <em>threshold</em> refers to the point or level at which something begins or changes.</p> <p>// As he stepped across the <em>threshold</em> a chorus of friends yelled "surprise!"</p> <p>// If your income rises above a certain <em>threshold</em>, your tax rate also rises.</p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/threshold">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>"First out of the kitchen was a plate of five breaded chicken tenders bathed in Nashville-style hot sauce. ... And these tenders indeed packed a <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wallop">wallop</a>, although the spiciness never quite reached my <em>threshold</em> of pain." — Grub Scout, <em>The Knoxville (Tennessee) News-Sentinel</em>, 30 Mar. 2022</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>Whenever you leave your home, walk from one room to another, or enter a building, you are crossing a threshold—that is, the horizontal floor piece that you cross over whenever you move through a doorway. But the earliest uses of <em>threshold</em> refer to a different type of boundary: an Old English translation of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anicius-Manlius-Severinus-Boethius">Boethius’s</a> <em>De consolatione philosophiae</em> uses the word in a sentence about how the sea was made so that it didn’t overstep the "threshold," or boundary, of the earth. In this translation, which was written around 888, <em>threshold</em> appears as <em>þeorscwold</em> (that first letter is called <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thorn">thorn</a> and it was used in O