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Friday, September 12, 2014

Library Word of the Week - Liminality

Mr. Evans' class is doing research on the vocabulary in The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. One of the words was something even I didn't know. So I looked it up!

Liminal

1 :  of or relating to a sensory threshold

2
:  barely perceptible
3
:  of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition :  in-betweentransitional <in the liminal state between life and death — Deborah Jowitt>

Origin of LIMINAL

Latin limin-, limen threshold
First Known Use: 1884


And Wikipedia says:
"In anthropologyliminality (from the Latin word lÄ«men, meaning "a threshold"[1]) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold"[citation needed]between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes." 

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