Translation
threshold
Word origin
Usually traced to French seuil, a doorsill, and behind that to Latin solum, the ground or floor, by way of a diminutive. English sole and soil come off the same Latin root.
- Origin
- French, from Latin
- Root
- solum
- English cognates
- sole, soil
Other proposed origins
- Others derive French seuil from Latin solea, a sandal or sill, rather than from solum. The two Latin words are related but not identical, and dictionaries genuinely split on which one the doorsill descends from. (Latin, solea)
- A third account, less often followed, takes it from Latin solium, a seat or raised platform, which would put the emphasis on the raised board rather than the ground. (Latin, solium)
Examples
.
He stood on the threshold and did not go in.
.
The cat sleeps on the doorstep.
.
She took one step across the threshold.
One root, and worth saying so. - does not come apart. The -lo ending invites a guess at the instrument suffix -- - the one that gives o a knife, a key, o a needle - but that suffix is -- with an i, and it would leave soj-, which is nothing. There is no -l- affix in Esperanto. Words like , , and simply end that way.
Concrete first, figurative second. A is the board or stone at the bottom of a doorway, the thing you step over. Esperanto uses it for the physical object far more readily than English does, where "threshold" has drifted almost entirely into the abstract and "doorstep" has taken the concrete job. Both senses are live here: is the doorstep, and is the brink of a new age. In the technical register it is also the threshold of a measurement - o, the threshold of audibility - and there is the nearer neighbour.
Against limo. A is a boundary or limit: it separates and it is not meant to be crossed. A is a boundary you cross by design - it is part of a door. That is the whole distinction and it holds in the figurative uses too: you reach a and stop, you cross a and are somewhere new.
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sojlo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "sojlo" (threshold): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 46.