transits

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of transit.

   The ship's transits through the canal were recorded in the harbor log.

   Two rare transits of Mercury fell within the same decade.

   Note

   The countable side of transit is the one you can tally: crossings of a canal, transits of Mercury across the sun's disk, or several of the surveyor's instruments, which resemble theodolites. For the US and Canadian sense of public transport, the mass noun does most of the work: riders take transit, not transits. The same spelling is also the verb's present-tense form, so a transits followed by an object is the verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of transit.

   The comet transits the inner solar system roughly every seventy-six years.

   A loaded tanker transits the canal in under twelve hours.

   Note

   Pair it with he, she, it or a singular noun. The object is usually the thing crossed: a tanker transits the canal, a planet transits the sun's disk. The verb can also stand alone, meaning simply to make a transit. It has specialist uses too: a surveyor transits an instrument by flipping it about its horizontal axis, and one network transits another's Internet traffic for payment, unlike peering, which is free or on equal terms.

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