I wanted to look up liminal because recently, aiming to sound academic, I described storytelling as a liminal art form. I was refering to the fact that storytelling takes places somewhere between the teller and the audience. Delighted to find, etymologically, that whilst limit is a good guide to what the word means – the listed meaning of its Latin root Limen is threshold – which is exactly the concept I was seeking. It appeals also, due to the extent we talk about thresholds and crossings in tales.
Interestingy, usage of the engish term liminal don't appear til the late 19th century, and really developed via its usage in anthropology to have a specific meaning listed as a transitional or intermediate state of a person's life (a different kind of threshold to the one I wanted to evoke). Storyteller Robert Bly is one of the writers cited by the OED to explain this usage.
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While you're at it, consider threshold. The first theatres appear to have been at the threshing grounds. The act of threshing involves a separation of chaff and grain. The threshold of the door indicates a curb that helps hold the thresh as it is separated...?
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