A space of change, when someone is between one stage of life and the next. The word comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold.

Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep described this middle stage in his 1909 study of rites of passage. Anthropologist Victor Turner later expanded the idea in the 1960s.

In Jewish life, a mikvah, or ritual bath, can mark a major life change. A mezuzah also marks a threshold between outside and inside.

Source: Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1909; English translation, University of Chicago Press, 1960).