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Contract vs Limit - What's the difference?

contract | limit |

As nouns the difference between contract and limit

is that contract is an agreement between two or more parties, to perform a specific job or work order, often temporary or of fixed duration and usually governed by a written agreement while limit is limit (restriction).

As an adjective contract

is (obsolete) contracted; affianced; betrothed.

As a verb contract

is (ambitransitive) to draw together or nearer; to shorten, narrow, or lessen.

contract

Etymology 1

From (etyl), from (etyl) contract, from (etyl) contractum, past participle of .

Noun

(en noun)
  • An agreement between two or more parties, to perform a specific job or work order, often temporary or of fixed duration and usually governed by a written agreement.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington
  • , title= Keeping the mighty honest , passage=British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.}}
  • (legal) An agreement which the law will enforce in some way. A legally binding contract must contain at least one promise, i.e., a commitment or offer, by an offeror to and accepted by an offeree to do something in the future. A contract is thus executory rather than executed.
  • (legal) A part of legal studies dealing with laws and jurisdiction related to contracts.
  • (informal) An order, usually given to a hired assassin, to kill someone.
  • (bridge) The declarer's undertaking to win the number of tricks bid with a stated suit as trump.
  • Hypernyms
    * (agreement that is legally binding) agreement
    Hyponyms
    * (agreement that is legally binding) bailment
    Derived terms
    * contractual * fixed-term contract * contract of employment

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (obsolete) Contracted; affianced; betrothed.
  • (Shakespeare)
  • (obsolete) Not abstract; concrete.
  • * Robert Recorde, , 1557:
  • But now in eche kinde of these, there are certaine nombers named Ab?tracte'': and other called nombers ''Contracte .

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl), from (etyl) contracter, from (etyl) contractum, past participle of . the verb developed after the noun, and originally meant only "draw together"; the sense "make a contract with" developed later.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (ambitransitive) To draw together or nearer; to shorten, narrow, or lessen.
  • The snail's body contracted into its shell.
    to contract one's sphere of action
  • * Wordsworth
  • Years contracting to a moment.
  • * Dr. H. More
  • In all things desuetude doth contract and narrow our faculties.
  • (grammar) To shorten by omitting a letter or letters or by reducing two or more vowels or syllables to one.
  • The word "cannot" is often contracted into "can't".
  • To enter into a contract with. (rfex)
  • To enter into, with mutual obligations; to make a bargain or covenant for.
  • * Hakluyt
  • We have contracted an inviolable amity, peace, and league with the aforesaid queen.
  • * Strype
  • Many persons prohibited by law.
  • To make an agreement or contract; to covenant; to agree; to bargain.
  • to contract for carrying the mail
  • To bring on; to incur; to acquire.
  • She contracted the habit of smoking in her teens.
    to contract a debt
  • * Alexander Pope
  • Each from each contract new strength and light.
  • * Jonathan Swift
  • Such behaviour we contract by having much conversed with persons of high stature.
  • To gain or acquire (an illness).
  • * 1999 , Davidson C. Umeh, Protect Your Life: A Health Handbook for Law Enforcement Professionals (page 69)
  • An officer contracted hepatitis B and died after handling the blood-soaked clothing of a homicide victim
  • To draw together so as to wrinkle; to knit.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Thou didst contract and purse thy brow.
  • To betroth; to affiance.
  • * Shakespeare
  • The truth is, she and I, long since contracted , / Are now so sure, that nothing can dissolve us.
    Synonyms
    * (lessen) abate, decrease, lessen, reduce * (shorten) shorten, shrink * catch, get
    Antonyms
    * (lessen) increase, expand * (shorten) grow, lengthen

    limit

    English

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl), from (etyl), from (etyl) .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • 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 , , 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.
  • (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) Given diagram F'' : ''J'' → ''C'', 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'' : ''N'' → ''L'' such that for all ''X'' ∈ Ob(''J ), \phi_X \circ u = \psi_X .
  • (poker) Short for fixed limit.
  • 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.
  • (obsolete) The space or thing defined by limits.
  • * Shakespeare
  • 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.
  • * Shakespeare
  • the dateless limit of thy dear exile
  • * Shakespeare
  • The limit of your lives is out.
  • (obsolete) A restriction; a check or curb; a hindrance.
  • * Shakespeare
  • I prithee, give no limits to my tongue.
  • (logic, metaphysics) A determining feature; a distinguishing characteristic.
  • Synonyms
    * (restriction) bound, boundary, limitation, restriction
    Derived terms
    * age limit * central limit theorem * city limits * elastic limit * in the limit * limit down * limit up * limitation * limitless * lower limit * outer limit * the sky is the limit * to the limit * time limit * unlimited * upper limit
    Descendants
    * German: (l)

    See also

    * bound * function

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (poker) Being a fixed limit game.
  • Etymology 2

    From (etyl) ; see noun.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To restrict; not to allow to go beyond a certain bound.
  • *
  • [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.
  • (mathematics) To have a limit in a particular set.
  • (obsolete) To beg, or to exercise functions, within a certain limited region.
  • Synonyms
    * (restrict) cap; restrict; withstrain