Other forms: limited, limits, limiting
A limit is the point past which you may not go. The speed limit on a motorway, a two-drink limit at the bar, the limit on your card, the sign where the town's limits end.
As a verb, to limit is to hold something below a set point: limit the damage, limit yourself to one biscuit. Limited then does double duty — a limited budget is a small one, while a limited company is one whose owners are not personally liable for its debts, which is what Ltd after a name means. In the plural, limits is the boundary of a place or of what is acceptable: city limits, off limits, knowing your limits. Learn the fixed phrases whole: within limits, over the limit, there is a limit to what one person can do in a day.
1nounlimitThe point or amount beyond which something is not allowed to go.
“He was fined for driving over the speed limit.”
2noungreatestThe greatest amount of something that is possible.
“There is a limit to how much one nurse can do in a single shift.”
3verbkeepTo keep something below a certain amount or size.
“The rules limit each visitor to two guests.”
4verbreduceTo reduce what someone is able to do.
“A bad knee limits how far he can walk.”
5nounedgeThe outer edge of an area.
“The farm lies just outside the city limits.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
limit is a boundary.
Limit came through Old French from Latin līmes, the strip of unploughed ground between two fields — the balk you walk along that shows where your land stops and your neighbour's starts. From that path came the sense of border, then boundary wall, and finally any line you must not cross. The older English word it displaced was ġemǣre.
Latin
līmes — a cross-path or balk between fields, hence a boundary, boundary line or wall, any path or road, border, limit
Old French
limit
Middle English
limit
English, today
limit
From Middle English limit, from Old French limit, from oblique stem of Latin līmes (“a cross-path or balk between fields, hence a boundary, boundary line or wall, any path or road, border, limit”). Displaced native ġemǣre. a doublet of limes.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA