limitation

Etymology

Latin limitatio. Morphologically limit + -ation

noun

1. The act of limiting or the state of being limited.
2. A restriction; a boundary, real or metaphorical, caused by some thing or some circumstance.
   Getting into his wheelchair after his amputation, it felt like a limitation you could roll in.
   He understood the exam material, but his fear was a limitation he could not overcome.
   The coaches are similar to those of the Hampshire diesel-electric units, which went into service in September, 1957, but have 8ft 6in wide bodies, instead of 9ft, because of loading gauge limitations on the South Eastern Division. 1962 December, “The Oxted Line diesel-electric multiple-units”, in Modern Railways, page 383
3. An imperfection or shortcoming that limits something's use or value.
   Both the MI score and the t-score have their limitations. MI computes a logarithm representing the number of co-occurrences of words compared to their occurrences apart in the corpus, which can highlight rare collocations if the components tend not to occur with other words. The t-score formula is less susceptible to this but its numerical result cannot be meaningfully compared across corpora of different sizes. 2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Position vectors, homologous chromosomes and gamma rays: Promoting disciplinary literacy through Secondary Phrase Lists”, in English for Specific Purposes, →DOI, page 5
4. (law) A time period after which some legal action may no longer be brought.
   The lawyer obtained impunity by dragging his obviously guilty client's case beyond the ten-year limitation.