restrict
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
to limit someone's actions or to keep something within a certain size or amount.
to keep someone or something within specific limits or boundaries. Transitive — requires a direct object.
Simple“The new laws restrict how much noise people can make late at night.”
In context“The government decided to restrict the flow of capital out of the country to stabilise the national currency during the crisis.”
PitfallThe law restricts people from smoking. The law restricts smoking.While 'prevent' or 'stop' use the 'from' pattern, 'restrict' usually takes the activity itself as a direct object or uses 'restrict someone to something'.
- 02 B2 Upper Intermediate
to keep someone or something inside a particular place or group.
to confine or keep within a specific physical or metaphorical boundary; often used with the preposition 'to'.
Simple“Access to the building is restricted to staff members only.”
In context“The search for the missing documents was restricted to the archives, as the investigators believed they had never left the premises.”
- 03 C1 Advanced
to look at a mathematical rule only for a smaller group of numbers.
to consider a function as defined only on a subset of its original domain.
Simple“If we restrict the function to positive numbers, we can find the square root easily.”
In context“By restricting the domain of the trigonometric function, we can define a unique inverse that satisfies the requirements of the proof.”
UsageThe verb is used transitively, often in the form 'restrict f to A'.
Antonyms
Usage restrict access · analysis restrict · largely restrict
“Como is not the first Italian city to restrict bicycles in historic or busy parts.”
“Those standards are now being upended, as South Carolina recently became the first state to officially restrict no-zero grading policies.”
Borrowed from Latin restrictus, perfect passive participle of restringō (“draw back tightly; restrain, restrict”), from re- (“back, again”) + stringō (“press, tighten, compress”). Doublet of ristretto as an adjective.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.