Forms: 4–6 lim-, lymitour(e, -ytour(e, (7–9 limitour), 6 lim-, lymiter, -yter, limmeter, 7 limitor, 6– limiter. [f. LIMIT v. + -ER1.]
1. (Also friar limiter.) A friar licensed to beg within certain limits. Obs. exc. Hist.
1377. Langl., P. Pl., B. V. 138. On limitoures and listres lesynges I ymped.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Wife’s T., 10. The grete charitee and prayeres Of lymytours and othere hooly freres.
1516. Will of R. Peke of Wakefield, 4 June (MS.). To every lymyter of the iiij orders of freers—xxd.
1552. Latimer, Serm. (1562), 94. A limitoure of the graye fryers, in the tyme of his limitation preached manye tymes and hadde but one Sermon.
1556. J. Heywood, Spider & F., ix. 1. There neuer was Fryer limiter, that duckt So low, where beggyng woon him twenty cheeses.
1591. Spenser, M. Hubberd, 85. I means me to disguize … like a Pilgrim, or a Lymiter.
transf. or allusive. 1624. Bp. Mountagu, Gagg, To Rdr. 2. Some of our Catholique Limitors had beene roming in the countrey and brake into my pale secretly.
2. One who or that which limits (in senses of the vb.).
1483. Cath. Angl., 217/1. A Lymytour, limitator.
1570. Levins, Manip., 80/2. A Limiter, limitator.
1612[?]. Two Noble K., V. i. 30. So hoyst we The sayles, that must these vessells port even where The heavenly lymiter pleases.
a. 1619. Fotherby, Atheom., II. i. § 5 (1622), 180. The Sunne is not that infinite limitour, which … setteth seuerall bounds, vnto all other things.
1639. Ld. G. Digby, Lett. conc. Relig. (1651), 27. I am sure they are the best declarers and limiters of their own [doctrines].
1645. Milton, Tetrach., Wks. 1851, IV. 222. Abolishing a law so good and moral, the limiter of sin.
