Other forms: quotas
A quota is the fixed number you have to reach, or the fixed number you are not allowed to pass. Twelve sales by the end of the month. Forty tonnes of cod a year. Two hundred visas and no more.
In sales and factories a quota is a target: you meet your quota, hit your quota, fall short of it. In trade and fishing it is a ceiling instead — an import quota, a catch quota, a quota imposed by law. A third use is about places kept back for a group, such as a hiring quota or a quota for women candidates, and that one starts arguments. Quotas get set, filled, raised, cut and scrapped. Do not let quota drift into quote: one is an amount, the other is a price you are given or a sentence you repeat.
1nounquotaA fixed amount that a person or group must produce, sell or reach.
“She hit her quota three days before the end of the month.”
2nounupperAn upper limit on how much may be produced, imported, caught or admitted.
“The fishing quota for cod was cut again this year.”
quota is a fixed amount set in advance.
Quota is half a Latin phrase. English borrowed quota pars from Latin and kept only the first word; the second one, the one meaning 'part', fell away and never made the crossing.
Latin
quota pars
English, today
quota
From Latin quota pars; see Latin quota.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA