capacity vs limit

capacity

noun
  • The maximum amount that can be held 

  • A measure of such ability; volume 

  • Electrical capacitance. 

  • Mental ability; the power to learn 

  • Legal authority (to make an arrest for example) 

  • The maximum that can be produced. 

  • The ability to hold, receive, or absorb 

  • The maximum that can be produced on a machine or in a facility or group. 

  • A role; the position in which one functions 

  • Capability; the ability to perform some task 

  • A faculty; the potential for growth and development 

adj
  • Filling the allotted space. 

limit

noun
  • Fixed limit. 

  • A restriction; a bound beyond which one may not go. 

  • The cone of a diagram through which any other cone of that same diagram can factor uniquely. 

  • A determining feature; a distinguishing characteristic. 

  • The final, utmost, or furthest point; the border or edge. 

  • The first group of riders to depart in a handicap race. 

  • A person who is exasperating, intolerable, astounding, etc. 

  • 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). 

  • Any of several abstractions of this concept of limit. 

adj
  • Being a fixed limit game. 

verb
  • To restrict; not to allow to go beyond a certain bound, to set boundaries. 

  • To have a limit in a particular set. 

How often have the words capacity and limit occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )