I'm thinking of something like an arch, but it doesn't have to be formed like an arch. The space shouldn't be long at all. I don't mean some sort of room between rooms. More like some hole or opening that acts like a segue between two rooms. For example, the hallway and the kitchen in an apartment. The opening is usually not so wide, either, I think. Two people might have to squeeze in to go through it simultaneously. I tried googling for pictures to help illustrate but uhh... not knowing the word made the effort unsuccessful. Any ideas?
Ok so I’m clearly asking for two the name of two things. Threshold is one of them. Thanks! I think the "wall-part" or whatever is called... a wall.
We have a lot of 1920's-1930's architecture with similar spaces in Southern California. My place was built in the early 1940's and has a similar very short hallway off the livingroom leading to the kitchen, and two people can't easily pass each other. If it's in a house or apartment, I'd call it a small hallway or an ante-room. If it's almost more like a tiny square-ish room than a rectangular hallway, the space usually had a function that's now obsolete, such as a tiny breakfast nook off the dining room or kitchen. (Sometimes it's located between the two.) A lot of them had built-in dining tables which have long been ripped out. If it's off the kitchen or dining room and has cabinetry on the walls, it was a butler's pantry (where the silver and serving items were kept). ETA: If it's between the front door and the living room, that's the foyer. It seems silly to have them in small apartments, but I see them in places built in the 1920's and occasionally the 1930's because some people still had maids then, and there was strict social etiquette about how far into a lady's apartment a gentleman caller was allowed. If the building is a public place, I would call it a small corridor. Hope that helps!
In the US, the threshold is outside, not inside (but that might be a regional thing). Once you're inside, that's the entryway or foyer.
I always thought the threshold was the imaginary boundary between inside and outside and not either inside or outside.
That's what I would say is correct, and that may be the proper term for that piece of wood or metal that seals the door at the bottom that one steps over...But my relatives in the Midwest would say the threshold is the part of the porch where the doormat is, as in "She looked out the window, and standing on the threshold, out in the rain, was a fellow who called himself The Dapper Hooligan." So... ETA: In doing a Google Image search for "threshold" many more images pop up for the strip of wood or metal (also apparently called a "door sill"-- who knew?), and that's the dictionary definition that popped up, but sprinkled in the Google Images search farther down are three or four pictures of doormats.
See, I would have called that the landing if it was at the top of some stairs, the porch if there was a covered wooden structure in front of the door, the deck if there was a large deck like structure, the patio if there was arranged stonework, or the alcove if the doorway was inset or had a stone of masonry like porch. This may be arbitrarily assigning words to things, though. I don't think I've actually checked the definitions of these things.
I think the threshold is that piece of wood or whatever that demarcates "inside" from "outside", with most of the wood (or whatever) being outside, but I'd say in addition to the threshold to the entire building, you can also have thresholds inside buildings. Like, the front door has the threshold for the whole house, but there may also be a threshold (literal or figurative) to the library, the dining room, the master suite... any significant room inside the house.
I think Shenanigator and Bayview both have it right. In the case of interior thresholds it's something that is separate from the floor. Ok so imagine you have two rooms next to each other, wall-to-wall (so if you put a hole in the wall of one room you'd be putting a hole in the other). Imagine there's a door between them. Now remove the door. There would be some space between the two rooms where you could walk from one room to the other. What is that space called Alternatively replace one of the rooms with a corridor and do the same thing (imagine the corridor and room connected via a door and then remove the door). Am I making sense? I'm not even sure there is a word for it.
That little space is what I have between my livingroom and kitchen. I just measured it, and it's three feet wide (but I have a small, one-foot wide bookcase taking up part of it so it's two feet of walkable space). We call it the "hall" or "the hallway" but it's not long, like one would typically think of a hallway as being. It's really more of a pass-through space. If I were to write about it I would probably say something like, "He paused at the entryway to the kitchen" or "He paused at the entrance to the kitchen." Or the entrance way. Something like that. ETA: The door leading to it was removed, but the arched space it once occupied is still called the doorway.
The name for a doorless doorway is a doorway, the space would only be the width of the wall. Once you get a wider space it would be hall. It might be called a passageway or a corridor in some settings. And as has been noted, sometimes it's an archway. If all that marks the change is something like going from carpet to tile, it can be called the transition. Threshold is used to define the edge of the change inside as well when one looks for doorless doorway transition on DuckDuckGo (Google alternative).
As far as I know there is no word for that space. Most call it what it has been called here. If you are feeling fancy...you could call it a vestibule. If it is going to be called something by characters living there, make up what they call it. One could call it 'the teleporter' while the other thinks they are nuts and call it a doorway or through way.
Thinking about a house I used to live in that had one, we called it a 'doorway' (or sometimes a 'door', even though it had none). That or 'opening'.
I have one in the room I'm sitting in right now, it's a doorless doorway from the living room to the hall. I don't believe I've ever heard anyone call it anything. There's a hall and a living room. But if I were writing a scene where two characters had an awkward moment or something as they passed each other through the opening, I'd call it a doorway.
Are we talking about what essentially functions as a very, very short hall? My brother's old apartment, for example, had a wall that contained a doorway/archway, with cabinets to both left and right. So the doorway/archway/tiny hall/whatever was maybe three feet deep and was thus a three-foot-long hall. Is that what we're talking about?
Oh, there's no shutting things down that easily! Once we get started, we can keep going for a WHILE. (Feel free to disregard further posts if you've gotten what you needed. We'll just play amongst ourselves...)
A vestibule is a small space between two walls. Usually a space between an exterior opening and an interior opening. Like a 'mud room' or similar, but can be any size.
