FWIW neither hoard nor ration imply anything about permanence of the thing to me. Whether you were rationed bread or you hoarded bread, the bread isn't going to be usable forever. At the same time whether you were rationed sugar or hoarded sugar, the sugar isn't going to expire (with good storage).

Rationed/hoarded do imply, to me, something different about how the quantity came to be though. Rationed being given or setting aside a fixed amount, hoarded being that you stockpiled/amassed it. Saying "you hoarded your rations" (whether they will expire) does feel more on the money than "you ration your rations" from that perspective.

I hope this doesn't come off too "well aktually", I've just been thinking about how I still realize different meanings/origins of common words later in life and the odd things that trigger me to think about it differently for the first time. A recent one for me was that "whoever" has the (fairly obvious) etymology of who+ever https://www.etymonline.com/word/whoever vs something like balloon, which has a comparatively more complex history https://www.etymonline.com/word/balloon

For me, the difference between ration and hoard is the uhh…rationality of the plan.

Rationing suggests a deliberate, calculated plan: we’ll eat this much at these particular times so our food lasts that long. Hoard seems more ad hoc and fear-driven: better keep yet another beat-up VGA cable, just in case.

It can only happens in HackerNews that people talking about Claude Code limit, can start discussing what is a better a word for explaining it. :-)

I just love this community for these silly things.

Isn't hoarding means you can get more bread ? While rationing means: "here is 1kg, use it however you want but you can't get more".

Bread can be rationed but cannot be hoarded.