visits

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of visit.

   Their frequent visits kept the old friendship alive across the years.

   Surprise visits from the regional manager kept the staff on edge.

   Note

   The plural counts separate occasions: trips, calls, or appointments such as a doctor's visits. Visits are typically paid. Archibald Marshall's dancers in 1909 'paid two visits to the buffet'. They are aimed at a place with to, as in the Geneva Convention's 'visits to the camp'. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb. A following object (visits the coast) marks the verb, and a preceding determiner (two visits) marks the noun.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of visit.

   Each spring, she visits the coast for a few quiet days.

   The inspector visits every site at least once a year.

   Note

   Not everything that visits is a guest. In Shakespeare's The Tempest, sleep 'seldom visits sorrow'. That line echoes the older sense of going to someone in distress to comfort them. Sickness and misfortune can likewise be said to visit a person, meaning to afflict them. Everyday use is social or official, and in both its old and new senses the verb takes its object directly, with no preposition: it visits sorrow, she visits the coast.

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