liminal
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Sometimes China's tolerance for the liminal is tactical.
View all »Definitions (3)
American Heritage Dictionary
Century Dictionary (2)
- Pertaining to the threshold or entrance; hence, relating to the beginning or first stage; inceptive; inchoative. Every stimulus must reach a certain intensity before any appreciable sensation results. This point is known as the threshold or liminal intensity. J. Sully, Outlines of Psychol., p. 114. The liminal difficulties cannot be evaded without the most disastrous consequences to the body of the exposition. Mind, IX. 428.
- Specifically In psychophysics, pertaiuing to the stimulus limen or differential limen. See limen. We may also introduce the concept of the limen, defining the just noticeable deviation from indifference as a liminal pleasantness or unpleasantness. O. Külpe (trans.), Outlines of Psychol., p. 243. The average liminal value obtained in these preliminary series gives us a norm or standard for the later work. E. B. Titchener, Exper. Psychol., I. i. 85.
GNU Webster's 1913 (1)
WordNet
Elsewhere on the web
View all » Examples
- "Give it to the children, " he said, and then she just wept and he held her. — Sharpe's Prey
- The remaining gold - he reckoned it was worth about nine thousand pounds - would be returned to the Bank of England and the Honourable John Lavisser could conveniently be blamed for all that was missing. — Sharpe's Prey
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Meghan is a creature of the Facebook generation that lives life online in that liminal state between public and private.
— Daily Digest: Does a Bill That Fails on the Web Make a Sound? -
Sometimes China's tolerance for the liminal is tactical.
— Foreign Policy In Focus - His relationship with Margarite was liminal. — Floating City
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