# limit
## English
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈlɪmɪt/
* (India) IPA: /ˈlɪmɪt/, /ˈlɪmt/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Rhymes: -ɪmɪt

### Etymology 1

From Middle English limit, from Old French limit, from Latin līmes (“a cross-path or balk between fields, hence a boundary, boundary line or wall, any path or road, border, limit”). Displaced native Old English ġemǣre. Doublet of limes.

#### Noun

limit (plural limits)
* A restriction; a bound beyond which one may not go.
    There are several existing limits to executive power.
    Two drinks is my limit tonight.
** 1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 21, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC:It is the conductor which communicates to the inhabitants of regions beyond its limit […]
** 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 17]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC: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.
* (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.
* (mathematics) Any of several abstractions of this concept of limit.
    Category theory defines a very general concept of limit.
* (category theory) The cone of a diagram through which any other cone of that same diagram can factor uniquely.
    Synonyms: inverse limit, projective limit
    Hyponyms: terminal object, categorical product, pullback, equalizer, identity morphism
* (poker) Fixed limit.
* The final, utmost, or furthest point; the border or edge.
    the limit of a walk, of a town, or of a country
** 1713, [Alexander] Pope, Windsor-Forest. […], London: […] Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC:As eager of the chase, the maid / Beyond the forest's verdant limits strayed.
** 2021 September 8, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Electric tramways at the heart of our seaside story”, in RAIL, number 939, page 59:"Like many other large resorts, the town operated electric tramways, with open-topped cars. The journey down the steep incline to the harbour must have been exhilarating at times, testing the brakes on the vehicles to the limit."
* (obsolete) The space or thing defined by limits.
** c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:The archdeacon hath divided it / Into three limits very equally.
* (obsolete) That which terminates a period of time; hence, the period itself; the full time or extent.
** 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:the dateless limit of thy dear exile
** c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]:The limit of your lives is out.
* (obsolete) A restriction; a check or curb; a hindrance.
** c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:I prithee, give no limits to my tongue.
* (logic, metaphysics) A determining feature; a distinguishing characteristic.
* (cycling) The first group of riders to depart in a handicap race.
* (colloquial, as "the limit") A person who is exasperating, intolerable, astounding, etc.
** 1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 63:Englehorn looked at his employer in incredulous admiration. ‘You’re the limit,’ he declared.

##### Synonyms

* (restriction): bound, boundary, limitation, restriction, threshold, rim

##### Derived terms

* age limit
* Armstrong limit
* Atterberg limit
* Betz limit
* blowdown limit
* Bremermann's limit
* cash limit
* central limit theorem
* Chandrasekhar limit
* Chu-Harrington limit
* city limit(s)
* credit limit
* Deutsch limit
* diffraction limit
* direct limit
* dizzy limit
* Eddington limit
* elastic limit
* Gabrielli-von Kármán limit
* Gabrielli-von Karman limit
* giddy limit
* Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit
* GZK limit
* Hayashi limit
* Hayflick limit
* in the limit
* Kármán limit
* Karman limit
* Landauer limit
* limitation
* limit bid
* limit break
* limit cardinal
* limit case
* limit comparison test
* limit cycle
* limit down
* limit inferior
* limitless
* limit of positive stability
* limit order
* limit ordinal
* limit point
* limit situation
* limit superior
* limit up
* lower limit
* McDowell limit
* McQ limit
* McQuary limit
* no limit
* outer limit
* pot limit
* push the limit
* quantum limit
* rate limit
* Roche limit
* Shannon limit
* Shockley-Queisser limit
* sky's-the-limit
* Sparrow's resolution limit
* speed limit
* spread limit
* term-limit
* term limit
* the sky is the limit
* the sky's the limit
* ticket time limit
* time-limit
* time limit
* to the limit
* unlimited
* upper limit
* von Kármán limit
* von Karman limit

##### Descendants

* German: Limit

##### Translations
#### Adjective

limit (not comparable)
* (poker) Being a fixed limit game.

#### See also

* bound
* function

### Etymology 2

From Middle English limiten, from Old French limiter, from Latin līmitō (“to bound, limit, fix, determine”), from līmes; see noun.

#### Verb

limit (third-person singular simple present limits, present participle limiting, simple past and past participle limited)
* (transitive) To restrict; to circumscribe; not to allow to go beyond a certain bound, to set boundaries.
    Synonyms: check, straiten; see also Thesaurus:hinder, Thesaurus:curb
    Antonyms: expand, release
    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?”, in 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.
** 2023 March 8, Gareth Dennis, “The Reshaping of things to come...”, in RAIL, number 978, page 48:Beeching is more disparaging about suburban services beyond the capital, and I think here lies one of the most critical shortcomings in his analysis. By not considering the potential for these cities to grow, both on their own merits and in response to London's limitations, he failed to future-proof these types of service, limiting them in favour of long-distance services.
* (mathematics, intransitive) To have a limit in a particular set.
    The sequence limits on the point a.
* (obsolete) To beg, or to exercise functions, within a certain limited region.
    a limiting friar

##### Derived terms

* limit out
* self-limiting

##### Translations
### Further reading

* “limit”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “limit”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
* “limit”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

### Anagrams

* milit.

## Czech
### Pronunciation

* IPA: [ˈlɪmɪt]
* Audio:(file)

### Noun

limit m inan
* limit

#### Related terms

* limita
* limitní
* limitovat

### Further reading

* “limit”, in Příruční slovník jazyka českého (in Czech), 1935–1957
* “limit”, in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého (in Czech), 1960–1971, 1989

## Hungarian
### Etymology

From English limit.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: [ˈlimit]
* Hyphenation: li‧mit
* Rhymes: -it

### Noun

limit (plural limitek)
* limit (the final, utmost, or furthest point)

#### Declension
### References

* ↑ Tótfalusi, István. Idegenszó-tár: Idegen szavak értelmező és etimológiai szótára (’A Storehouse of Foreign Words: an explanatory and etymological dictionary of foreign words’). Budapest: Tinta Könyvkiadó, 2005. →ISBN

## Indonesian
### Etymology

Internationalism, from Dutch limiet, from Middle Dutch limiten, from Old French limite, from Latin līmes.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈlimɪt̚/
* Rhymes: -mɪt, -ɪt, -t
* Hyphenation: li‧mit

### Noun

limit (plural limit-limit)
* limit:
** the final, utmost, or furthest point; the border or edge
    Synonyms: batas, had
** (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)
    Synonym: had (Standard Malay)

### References

* ↑ Nicoline van der Sijs (2010) Nederlandse woorden wereldwijd‎, Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers, →ISBN, →OCLC

### Further reading

* “limit” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016.

## Polish
### Etymology

Borrowed from French limite.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈli.mit/
* Audio:(file)
* Rhymes: -imit
* Syllabification: li‧mit

### Noun

limit m inan (related adjective limitowy)
* limit (restriction; bound beyond which one may not go)

#### Derived terms

* limitować impf

### Further reading

* limit in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
* limit in Polish dictionaries at PWN

## Serbo-Croatian
### Etymology

Borrowed from German Limit.

### Noun

lìmit m (Cyrillic spelling лѝмит)
* boundary
* boundary that cannot be surpassed

#### Declension
## Sundanese
### Etymology 1

Compare Javanese ꦭꦶꦩꦶꦠ꧀ (limit, “(of a road) flat and smooth”)

#### Adjective

limit (Sundanese script ᮜᮤᮙᮤᮒ᮪)
* smooth, neat

### Etymology 2

From Indonesian limit.

#### Noun

limit (Sundanese script ᮜᮤᮙᮤᮒ᮪)
* limit
** border
    Synonym: wates
** (mathematics) a value to which a sequence converges

### Further reading

* "LIMIT", in Coolsma, S (1913) Soendaneesch-Hollandsch Woordenboek (in Dutch), Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff's Uitgeversmaatschappij
* Dudu Prawiraatmaja, Achlan Husen, Sukandi, Ice Sutara Kama Yudibrata (1986) Perkembangan Bahasa Sunda Sesudah Perang Dunia II [Post-WWII Development of the Sundanese Language] (in Indonesian), Jakarta: Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan

## Tagalog
### Pronunciation

* (Standard Tagalog) IPA: /ˈlimit/ [ˈliː.mɪt̪̚]
* Rhymes: -imit
* Syllabification: li‧mit

### Etymology 1

Compare Kapampangan limit.

#### Noun

limit (Baybayin spelling ᜎᜒᜋᜒᜆ᜔)
* frequency
    Synonyms: dalas, kadalasan, kalimitan, pagkamalimit
* closeness; compactness; density
    Synonyms: sinsin, kasinsinan

##### Derived terms

* kalimitan
* limitan
* lumimit
* malimit

### Etymology 2

Borrowed from English limit, from Middle English limit, from Old French limit, from Latin līmes. Doublet of limite.

#### Noun

limit (Baybayin spelling ᜎᜒᜋᜒᜆ᜔)
* limit (final, utmost, or furthest point; the border or edge)
    Synonyms: hanggahan, kasukdulan, sukdulan, dulo, lindero
* limit (restriction; bound beyond which one may not go)
    Synonyms: hanggahan, takda, limitasyon, lindero, saklaw, sakop, hantungan

##### Related terms

* limita
* limitado
* limitasyon
* limite
* lindero

### Further reading

* “limit”, in KWF Diksiyonaryo ng Wikang Filipino, Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, 2024
* “limit”, in Pambansang Diksiyonaryo | Diksiyonaryo.ph, Manila, 2018
* Panganiban, José Villa (1973) Diksyunaryo-Tesauro Pilipino-Ingles (overall work in Tagalog and English), Quezon City: Manlapaz Publishing Co., page 640
* San Buena Ventura, Fr. Pedro de (1613) Juan de Silva, editor, Vocabulario de lengua tagala: El romance castellano puesto primero‎, La Noble Villa de Pila
** page 38: “Ajuntar) Limit (pp) como rejas o otra [coſa]”
** page 307: “Eſpeſar) Limit (pp) como rejas o loque ſe hinca”
** page 307: “Eſpeſo) Limit (pp) como arboles rejas o otra coſa”
** page 377: “Iunto) Limit (pp) como rejas o otra coſa”