restrict

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.

• IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈstɹɪkt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪkt

restrict (third-person singular simple present restricts, present participle restricting, simple past and past participle restricted)

1. To restrain within boundaries; to limit; to confine

   After suffering diahrroea, the patient was restricted to a diet of rice, cold meat, and yoghurt.

   • 2011 September 28, Jon Smith, “Valencia 1 - 1 Chelsea”, in BBC Sport‎^[1], archived from the original on 4 February 2023:

     It was no less than Valencia deserved after dominating possession in the final 20 minutes although Chelsea defended resolutely and restricted the Spanish side to shooting from long range.

   • 2026 March 20, “US judge blocks Pentagon’s restrictions on press after New York Times lawsuit”, in The Guardian‎^[2], archived from the original on 21 March 2026:

     In its lawsuit, the Times said the policy unlawfully restricts essential newsgathering techniques and gives the Pentagon “unfettered” discretion to revoke passes, permitting it to impose the type of “viewpoint-based” press restrictions forbidden by the constitution.

2. (specifically, mathematics) To consider (a function) as defined on a subset of its original domain.

   If we restrict sine to ${\displaystyle \left[-{\frac {\pi }{2}},{\frac {\pi }{2}}\right]}$, we can define its inverse.

• (to restrain within bounds): limit, bound, circumscribe, withstrain, restrain, repress, curb, coerce, quarantine (fig.)

• restriction
• restraint
• restrain

restrict (comparative more restrict, superlative most restrict)

1. (obsolete) Restricted.

• critters, stricter