different between scarce vs limit

English

Alternative forms

• scarse (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English scarce, skarce, scarse, scars, from Old Northern French scars, escars ("sparing, niggard, parsimonious, miserly, poor"; > French échars, Medieval Latin scarsus (“diminished, reduced”)), of uncertain origin. One theory is that it derives originally from a Late Latin *scarpsus, *excarpsus, a participle form of *excarpere (“take out”), from Latin ex- + carpere; yet the sense evolution is difficult to trace. Compare also Middle Dutch schaers (“sparing, niggard”), Middle Dutch schaers (“a pair of shears, plowshare”), scheeren (“to shear”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?sk??s/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?sk??s/

Adjective

scarce (comparative scarcer, superlative scarcest)

1. Uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.

   • You tell him silver is scarcer now in England, and therefore risen in value one fifth.
2. (archaic) Scantily supplied (with); deficient (in); used with of.

Synonyms

• (uncommon, rare): geason, infrequent, raresome; see also Thesaurus:rare

Derived terms

Related terms

• scarcity

Translations

Adverb

scarce (not comparable)

1. (now literary, archaic) Scarcely, only just.
   • 1898, J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet Chapter 4:

     Yet had I scarce set foot in the passage when I stopped, remembering how once already this same evening I had played the coward, and run home scared with my own fears.

   • 1906, Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman:

     He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,

     But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand

     As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

     And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

     (Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)

   • 1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage 1993, p. 122:

     Upon the barred and slitted wall the splotched shadow of the heaven tree shuddered and pulsed monstrously in scarce any wind.

   • 1969, John Cleese, Monty Python's Flying Circus:

     Well, it's scarce the replacement then, is it?

Anagrams

• Craces, arcsec

Middle English

Noun

scarce

1. Alternative form of sarse

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?l?m?t/
• (India) IPA^(key): /?l?m?t/, /?l?mt/
• Rhymes: -?m?t

Etymology 1

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

Noun

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) 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

5. (poker) 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
7. (obsolete) The space or thing defined by limits.
8. (obsolete) That which terminates a period of time; hence, the period itself; the full time or extent.
9. (obsolete) A restriction; a check or curb; a hindrance.
10. (logic, metaphysics) A determining feature; a distinguishing characteristic.
11. (cycling) The first group of riders to depart in a handicap race.
12. (colloquial, as "the limit") A person who is exasperating, intolerable, astounding, etc.

Synonyms

• (restriction): bound, boundary, limitation, restriction

Derived terms

Descendants

• German: Limit

Translations

Adjective

limit (not comparable)

1. (poker) Being a fixed limit game.

See also

• bound
• function

Etymology 2

From Middle English limiten, from Old French limiter, from Latin l?mit? (“to bound, limit, fix, determine”), from l?mes; 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, to set boundaries.

   • [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. (mathematics, intransitive) To have a limit in a particular set.

3. (obsolete) To beg, or to exercise functions, within a certain limited region.

Synonyms

• (restrict): See Thesaurus:hinder

Translations

Further reading

• limit in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• limit in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• limit at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• milit.

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?l?m?t]

Noun

limit m

1. limit

Related terms

• limita
• limitní
• limitovat

Further reading

• limit in P?íru?ní slovník jazyka ?eského, 1935–1957
• limit in Slovník spisovného jazyka ?eského, 1960–1971, 1989

Hungarian

Etymology

From English limit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?limit]
• Hyphenation: li?mit
• Rhymes: -it

Noun

limit (plural limitek)

1. limit (the final, utmost, or furthest point)

Declension

References

Serbo-Croatian

Etymology

From German Limit.

Noun

lìmit m (Cyrillic spelling ?????)

1. boundary
2. boundary that cannot be surpassed

Declension

Tagalog

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?li.mit/

Noun

limit

1. frequency
2. closeness; compactness; density

Synonyms

• kalimitan

Derived terms

• malimit