liminal
adjective
Deborah JowittJon Goss
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Get in Between Liminal
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”).
Examples of liminal in a Sentence
Matt Grobar, Deadline, 12 May 2026
Airports themselves, liminal spaces that, normally, are pleasantly severed from the lurches of the world, spun out, too.
—Doreen St. Félix, New Yorker, 9 May 2026
Mantello uses a 1948 draft of Arthur Miller’s script to reimagine the American masterpiece as a psychological drama unfolding in liminal space rather than a literal family home.
—Theater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 6 May 2026
Kids can exist in this in-between place full of uncertainty and porousness and ambiguity and all kinds of liminal stuff that dead dull finished grown-ups find difficult to endure.
—Mac Barnett, Longreads, 5 May 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Liminal.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liminal. Accessed 20 May. 2026.
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liminal
adjective
