About
The character 阈 (traditionally written as 閾) is a phono-semantic compound character. It is composed of 门 (門, meaning "door") as the semantic component and 或 as the phonetic component. The "door" framing "或" implies a sense of separation or division. Its original meaning refers to a threshold (doorsill)—the wooden or stone horizontal bar at the bottom of a doorframe that one must step over when entering. Later, the meaning was extended from this architectural component to represent various abstract boundaries or critical values, such as the sensory threshold in psychology, or the minimum amount of stimulus required to trigger a reaction.
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