liminary

From French liminaire (“introductory”) from Latin līmināris, from līmen (“doorstep, threshold; doorway, entrance; beginning, commencement”) + -ālis (suffix forming adjectives of relationship from nouns). Līmen is possibly derived from līmus (“askew; sideways”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *Heh₃l- (“to bend, bow; elbow”)) + -men (suffix forming neuter nouns of the third declension) (from Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ (suffix forming action nouns or result nouns from verbs)).

liminary (comparative more liminary, superlative most liminary)

1. (now rare) Introductory or preparatory.
   • 2017, Christoph Pieper, “Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Monasteriensis: Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Münster 2012). Astrid Steiner-Weber and Karl A. E. Enenkel, eds. Acta Conventus Neo-Latini 15. Leiden: Brill, 2015. xxxvi + 632 pp. $299.”, in Renaissance Quarterly, volume 70, number 1, University of Chicago Press, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 253:

     Closely connected to the epigrammatic form of entries in alba are poems that serve as prefatory or postfatory material of early modern prints. Harm-Jan van Dam dedicates his article to this kind of liminary poetry.

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “liminary”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.