A liminal space is an entre deux, an interstice.  The shoreline, a space which both exists and doesn't depending on the tide, is a perfect example of this. The term liminal originates in anthropology, in particular Victor Turner's work on ritual in which liminality can refer to a space or a condition. The word is derived from the Latin limen, meaning threshold or seuil. For Turner, liminality is an in-between state, a phase which is outside conventional institutional structures. Turner suggests that ‘Liminal entities’ are ‘neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial . . .’; liminality is a moment, ‘“out of time”’ (Turner, 1969: 95; and Turner, 1974: 57). It is ‘an interval, however brief, of “margin” or “limen”, when the past is momentarily negated, suspended or abrogated, and the future has not yet begun. There is an instant of pure potentiality when everything trembles in the balance’ (Turner, 1974: 75).       

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Turner, V. (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.
        

—— (1974). ‘Liminal to Liminoid in Play, Flow and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies, 60, pp. 53-92. 

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