imports

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of import.

   Rising imports widened the trade deficit last quarter.

   Many of the household electronics on sale are imports from East Asia.

   Note

   Only the countable meanings take this plural: goods brought in from outside, and, in the Philippines, foreign players in a sports league, where a team's imports are its overseas players. The uncountable uses have no plural. Neither the practice of importing nor the clipped import meaning "importance" pluralizes, so a matter of great import never becomes "great imports." In trade talk, the plural sits naturally beside deficit.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of import.

   The firm imports rare timber for its high-end furniture.

   Our software imports data from older systems automatically.

   Note

   The -s form serves every sense of the verb, and they divide by what follows. Trade and software take a plain object: a firm imports timber, a program imports files from another system. The older senses of mattering take a person or a that-clause instead (it imports us to know). In that impersonal construction, import means "is of consequence," not "brings in."

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