restricted

1. 1
   adjective

   Kept within set bounds and not free to extend beyond a fixed point.

   Their spending was tightly restricted after the budget cuts.

   Building is allowed only within a restricted zone near the river.

   Similarlimited, confined, constrained, controlled

   Oppositeunlimited, unrestricted

2. 2
   adjective

   Open or available only to certain people who have been granted permission.

   The lab is a restricted facility, and only cleared researchers may enter.

   Membership remained restricted to those who received a formal invitation.

   Similarprivate, exclusive, limited

   Oppositepublic, open

   Note

   Here the limit falls on who may enter or read, not on how far something extends. That is the difference from the plain "limited" sense. It is the language of signs and security: a restricted area, restricted access, a restricted military document. The noun it modifies is usually a place, a document or a right of entry, and restricted to names the group allowed in.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of restrict.

   The government restricted travel between the two regions.

   Heavy snow restricted access to the mountain village.

   Note

   A regular verb, so one form covers both the past tense and the participle: they restricted travel; travel was restricted. The participle shares its spelling with the adjective for "limited", and grading separates them, since more restricted and most restricted belong only to the adjective. Mathematicians put the participle after a function, as in f restricted to a subset of its domain.

4. 4
   adjectivehistoricalUS

   Open only to customers who do not belong to a racial, ethnic, or religious minority.

   The country club remained restricted well into the 1950s, barring Jewish and Black applicants.

   Advertisements for the restricted resort quietly signaled who would not be welcome.

   Similarsegregated, exclusive

   Oppositeintegrated

   Note

   A word from the history of American discrimination, when a hotel sign could read "This hotel is restricted: no Blacks." Used on its own, the adjective named no one, which made it a euphemism in advertising. Today it belongs to writing about that past. Because it looks identical to the "authorized access" sense, careful writers make the exclusion explicit instead of letting the word hide it.

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