Word of the Day

: September 15, 2024

liminal

adjective LIM-uh-nul

What It Means

Liminal is a formal word most often used to describe an intermediate state, phase, or condition. It can also describe something that is barely perceptible or barely capable of eliciting a response.

// The essay presents an image of the border region as a liminal zone where one culture blends into another.

See the entry >

liminal in Context

“The House of Broken Bricks is set in a fictional village situated on the very real Somerset Levels in southwest England. This is a liminal space that despite ongoing modernization is constantly fighting to revert into ancient marshlands. Here the flora and fauna intrude into everyday living, whether it be through the ritual hunting of roe deer come autumn, the picking of ripe sloes for gin, the return of house martins every spring or the war against cabbage white caterpillars on the salad greens.” — Fiona Williams, LitHub.com, 10 Apr. 2024

Did You Know?

Liminal is a word for the in-between. It describes states, times, spaces, etc., that exist at a point of change—a metaphorical threshold—as in “the liminal zone between sleep and wakefulness.” The idea of a threshold is at the word’s root; it comes from Latin limen, meaning “threshold.” In technical use liminal means “barely perceptible” or “barely capable of eliciting a response,” and it has a familiar partner with a related meaning: subliminal can mean “inadequate to produce a sensation or a perception,” though it more often means “existing or functioning below the threshold of consciousness.” Limen has served as the basis for a number of other English words, including eliminate (“to cast out”), sublime (“lofty in conception or expression”), preliminary (“introductory”), and the woefully underused postliminary (“subsequent”).