earmark vs limit

earmark

noun
  • A mark for identification; a distinguishing mark. 

  • The designation of specific projects in appropriations of funding for general programs. 

  • A mark or deformation of the ear of an animal, intended to indicate ownership. 

verb
  • To mark (sheep or other animals) by slitting the ear. 

  • To specify or set aside for a particular purpose, to allocate. 

  • To designate part of a pension to be payable to the holder's former spouse or partner at its time of payment. 

limit

noun
  • A determining feature; a distinguishing characteristic. 

  • 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. 

  • Fixed limit. 

  • 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. 

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

  • To have a limit in a particular set. 

adj
  • Being a fixed limit game. 

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