Arent the words, limited and Partial mean the same thing? I was confused as 3 words including circumscribed meant the same thing. Care to help.
Can you have a look?
@Karishma
This is a tricky question. Here’s how I evaluated the meaning of the 3 words -
- limited means a restriction or boundary beyond which there is no scope for increase (Eg: limited resource)
- partial means “incomplete” which implies there could be scope for increase (Eg: partial sunlight).
(The 2nd meaning of partial is bias, but of course, it is unrelated here.) - circumscribed means to bound or restrict within some “limit”.
Hence ‘limited’ and ‘circumscribed’ would be the better pair here.
Some more explanations I found helpful on greprepclub.com-
- From a synonym strength perspective, (limited, circumscribed) rank higher. Though (limited, partial) can be thought to convey the meaning of “incomplete”, they are not strong synonyms especially compared to (limited, circumscribed)
- And, you are using these words as adjectives to describe “talents”. “limited” generally goes with talents, not “incomplete” (incomplete conveys something is not complete, here “talent” is not complete but wrt to what?)
Hope this helps!