# limit

## English

### Pronunciation

• IPA(key): /ˈlɪmɪt/
•  Audio (US) Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player. You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser. (file)
• Rhymes: -ɪmɪt

### Etymology 1

From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin limes (a cross-path or balk between fields, hence a boundary, boundary line or wall, any path or road, border, limit).

#### Noun

Commutative diagram of the universal property of cone L as the limit of F.

limit (plural limits)

1. A restriction; a bound beyond which one may not go.
There are several existing limits to executive power.
Two drinks is my limit tonight.
• 1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, chapter 21:
It is the conductor which communicates to the inhabitants of regions beyond its limit, []
• 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, episode 17:
Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, []
• 2012 March 6, Dan McCrum, Nicole Bullock and Guy Chazan, Financial Times, “Utility buyout loses power in shale gas revolution”:
At the time, there seemed to be no limit to the size of ever-larger private equity deals, with banks falling over each other to arrange financing on generous terms and to invest money from their own private equity arms.
2. (mathematics) A value to which a sequence converges. Equivalently, the common value of the upper limit and the lower limit of a sequence: if the upper and lower limits are different, then the sequence has no limit (i.e., does not converge).
The sequence of reciprocals has zero as its limit.
3. (mathematics) Any of several abstractions of this concept of limit.
Category theory defines a very general concept of limit.
4. (category theory) Given diagram F : JC, a cone (L, φ) from L ∈ Ob(C) to F is the limit of F if it has the universal property that for any other cone (N, ψ) from N ∈ Ob(C) to F there is a unique morphism u : NL such that for all X ∈ Ob(J), $\phi_X \circ u = \psi_X$.
5. (poker) Short for fixed limit.
6. The final, utmost, or furthest point; the border or edge.
the limit of a walk, of a town, or of a country
• Alexander Pope
As eager of the chase, the maid / Beyond the forest's verdant limits strayed.
7. (obsolete) The space or thing defined by limits.
• Shakespeare
The archdeacon hath divided it / Into three limits very equally.
8. (obsolete) That which terminates a period of time; hence, the period itself; the full time or extent.
• Shakespeare
the dateless limit of thy dear exile
• Shakespeare
The limit of your lives is out.
9. (obsolete) A restriction; a check or curb; a hindrance.
• Shakespeare
I prithee, give no limits to my tongue.
10. (logic, metaphysics) A determining feature; a distinguishing characteristic.
##### Translations

limit (not comparable)

1. (poker) Being a fixed limit game.

### Etymology 2

From Middle English limiten, from Old French limiter, from Latin limitare (to bound, limit, fix, determine), from limes; see noun.

#### Verb

limit (third-person singular simple present limits, present participle limiting, simple past and past participle limited)

1. (transitive) To restrict; not to allow to go beyond a certain bound.
We need to limit the power of the executive.
I'm limiting myself to two drinks tonight.
• 2013 August 10, “Can China clean up fast enough?”, The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
[The Chinese government] has jailed environmental activists and is planning to limit the power of judicial oversight by handing a state-approved body a monopoly over bringing environmental lawsuits.
2. () To have a limit in a particular set.
The sequence limits on the point a.
3. (obsolete) To beg, or to exercise functions, within a certain limited region.
a limiting friar