The character 限制 is formed by combining two meaningful components: 限, which depicts a hill (阝, a terrain radical) beside a marker (艮, suggesting a boundary or limit), conceptually representing a physical or figurative boundary; and 制, which originally depicted a knife (刂) cutting or shaping a tree trunk, conveying the idea of cutting down to size, regulating, or controlling. Together, these pictographic and ideographic ideas merge to create the concept of "restriction", the act of setting boundaries (限) and enforcing control (制) over something.