I just read a newspaper article about the memorial service held for Ellen the elephant. Ellen died on July 5, 2011. She had been at the Little Rock Zoo in Arkansas since 1954 and is being mourned in a big way.
This post is not about Ellen, but a word that appears in the story about Ellen.
A caption under a photo of Ellen walking towards the entrance to her pen reads:
“A youthful Ellen approaches the too-low threshold of her pen in an undated photo.”
The story explains why the photo has been included:
“For most of her life, the threshold in and out of her quarters was so short she scraped her back…”
The literal meaning of threshold is
The piece of timber or stone which lies below the bottom of a door, and has to be crossed in entering a house…
The word threshold has many figurative meanings, including “entrance” or “doorway,” but, in the context of this story about Ellen, the writer is using the word in a literal sense to indicate the part of the entrance that was “too low” or “so short.”
The part of the pen entrance that scraped the elephant’s back before the zoo built her better quarters was not the threshold, but the lintel.
lintel: a horizontal piece of timber, stone, etc. placed over a door, window, or other opening
The part of the door opening that runs vertically from the lintel to the threshold is called the jamb.