Word: threshold

A threshold is where you thresh — and threshing, before it meant beating grain, meant treading it, on a hard floor at the door. So the doorsill took the name of the work done just inside it: the place you trod. The second half is one of the honest mysteries of English: the -hold looks like the verb "hold" but is folk etymology, a tidying of an element already opaque a thousand years ago (þrescold,…