Fwd: "transit" - Word of the Day from the OED

[Dave Monroe]

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Subject: "transit" - Word of the Day from the OED
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OED Online Word of the Day

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transit, n.

SECOND EDITION 1989

(trnst, træns-, -nz-)  Also 5 trancyte, 5-7 transite. [ad. L.
transit-us (- stem), verbal n. from transre to cross, f. trans across
+ re to go. So It. transito, whence Fr. transit (17th c.).]

    1. a. The action or fact of passing across or through; passage or
journey from one place or point to another. Often in phrase in
transit, L. in transitu.

c1440 Gesta Rom. ii. 12 (Add. MS.) Above oure hede there is a transite
of men [Harl. passage and goyng of peple]. 1716 M. DAVIES Athen. Brit.
II. 171 Henry..of Huntington.., who writ ten Books Historiæ Anglorum,
from the Transit and Introit of the Saxons hither, to the Year 1153.
1766 W. DIGBY in Jesse Selwyn & Contemp. (1843) II. 12, I lay at
Gloucester in my transit. 1833 RITCHIE Wand. Loire 27 Sometimes..the
transit from Nantes to Orleans takes two months! 1841 CATLIN N. Amer.
Ind. xlvi. II. 87, I..made a transit across the prairies. 1853 KANE
Grinnell Exp. vii. (1856) 50 Of the voyages to Lancaster Sound..the
transit of the middle ice is the essential feature. 1877 BLACK Green
Past. xxxii, In our rapid transit from place to place.

    b. concr. A way for passing, a passage.

c1440 Promp. Parv. 499/2 Trancyte, where menn walke, transitus.

    c. The passage or carriage of persons or goods from one place to another.

1800 COLQUHOUN Comm. Thames viii. 259 Property..stationary on the
Quays or in transit on the River. 1855 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. xiii. III.
254 While he governed, no prohibition..impeded the transit of
commodities from any part of the island to any other. 1866 ROGERS
Agric. & Prices I. xx. 504 The cost of carriage. Occasionally..this is
charged in the value given, the transit being..undertaken frequently
by common carriers. 1870 YEATS Nat. Hist. Comm. 62 The means of
transit are so bad, that much good corn is left to rot upon the
ground.

    (b) spec. Public passenger transport; freq. attrib. Chiefly N. Amer.

1873, etc. [see rapid-transit s.v. RAPID a. 6]. 1967 Boston Sunday
Globe 23 Apr. 8/2 Legislature to launch a 10-year, $300 million urban
transit program. 1971 Rand Daily Mail 27 Mar. 11/1 White bus drivers
employed by a transit authority in an unnamed South African city. 1979
Tucson (Arizona) Citizen 20 Sept. 1C/3 The Canadian city has good mass
transit.

    d. transf. A place at which a river may be crossed; a crossing. rare.

1852 GROTE Greece II. lxix. IX. 39 A..flourishing town, a centre of
commerce enriched by the important ford or transit of the river
Euphrates close to it.

    2. fig. (in various senses.) A passing across; a transition or
change; esp. the passage from this life to the next by death.

1657 W. MORICE Coena quasi , Diat. v. 237 There can be no such
transite from one kinde of action to another. 1765 H. WALPOLE Otranto
iii. (1798) 50 To pray for her happy transit to a better life. 1810
KNOX & JEBB Corr. II. 19 The transit from autumn to winter. 1823 SCOTT
Quentin D. vi, Speak a word of comfort to him ere he make his transit,
Trois-Eschelles. 1859 HOLLAND Gold F. xv. 182 Old men..whose work of
life is..done, and who may in peace..sit down and wait their
mysterious transit. 1871 EARLE Philol. Eng. Tongue §270 This verb made
an early transit to the weak form.

    3. Astrol. The passage of a planet across some special point or
region of the zodiac.

[1621 BURTON Anat. Mel. I. ii. I. iv, If , by his revolution, or
transitus, shall offend any of those radicall promissors in his
geniture.] 1671 SALMON Syn. Med. I. xxix. 61 In Directions and
Transits three things are to be considered; first the Significator,
secondly the Promissor; thirdly the sign and house in which they
happen. 1819 J. WILSON Dict. Astrol. s.v., The transits of the are
said to cause all the daily passing events of a man's life, as she
transits the , , , , or , of any particular house.

    4. Astron.    a. The passage of an inferior planet (Mercury or
Venus) across the sun's disk, or of a satellite or its shadow across
the disk of a planet; formerly also applied to an occultation of a
star or planet by the moon, or of a star by a planet.

1669 FLAMSTEAD in Phil. Trans. IV. 1110 Let me desire those, who have
fit..Instruments, to observe this Transit. 1704 J. HARRIS Lex. Techn.
I, Transit, in Astronomy, signifies the passing of any Planet just by
or under any Fixt Star; or of the Moon in particular, covering or
moving close by any other Planet. 1769 M. CUTLER in Life, etc. (1888)
I. 20 The 3d of this month happened the Transit of Venus over the
sun's disk. 1769 COOK Voy. r. World I. xiii. (1773) 137 On Thursday
the 1st of June, the Saturday following being the day of the Transit,
I dispatched Mr. Gore in the long-boat to Imao. 1829 Chapters Phys.
Sc. 398 The transits of Mercury and Venus are really eclipses of the
sun. 1868 LOCKYER Guillemin's Heavens III. II. i. (ed. 3) 478 The
value of the Sun's distance at present received has been deduced from
the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769. 1910 Whitaker's Almanack 88
Only Satellite IV [of Jupiter] will be visible at 2.30 a.m. February
24Satellite II. being in transit, Satellite III. occulted, and
Satellite I. eclipsed.
transf. 1859 in Merc. Marine Mag. (1860) VII. 65 The Shoal first seen
was in transit with Embleton Island, bearing N.E. E.

    b. The passage of a star or other celestial body across the
meridian at its culmination.

1812 WOODHOUSE Astron. viii. 48 Two successive transits of a star over
the meridian. 1834 M. SOMERVILLE Connex. Phys. Sc. vii. 61 While
observing transits of the fixed stars across the meridian at Cayenne.

    c. Short for transit-circle, -compass, -instrument, or
-theodolite: see 5. colloq.

1843 Penny Cycl. XXV. 122/1 Transit, or Transit Instrument. Ibid.
122/2 Such an account of the transit as will enable any one to use it
with tolerable success. 1879 NEWCOMB & HOLDEN Astron. 74 The meridian
transit instrument, or briefly the ‘transit’. 1897 Edin. Rev. July 66
The institution, furnished only with a transit when he took it in
charge.

    5. attrib. and Comb., usually in relation to the conveyance of
goods and passengers, as transit-company, -depot, -line, -road, -room,
-time, -traffic, -way; also transit camp, a camp for the temporary
accommodation of servicemen awaiting posting, refugees,
prisoners-of-war, etc.; transit-circle, an astronomical instrument
consisting of a telescope carrying a large graduated circle, by which
the right ascension and declination of a star may be determined by
observation of it in transit (sense 4b); a meridian-circle;
transit-clock, a clock used in conjunction with a transit-instrument;
transit-compass, an instrument, resembling a theodolite, used in
surveying for the measurement of horizontal angles; transit-duty, a
duty paid on goods passing through a country; transit-instrument, an
astronomical telescope mounted on a fixed east-and-west axis, by which
the time of the passage of a celestial body across the meridian may be
determined; usually applied to one without a circle (cf.
transit-circle); transit lounge, a waiting-room for transit passengers
at an airport; transit man N. Amer., a surveyor who uses a
transit-compass; transit-pass, a warrant to pass through a country
without payment of duty; transit passenger, a passenger making a brief
stop at an airport in transit to another destination;
transit-theodolite = transit-compass; transit-trade, trade arising out
of the passage of foreign goods through a country; transit visa, a
visa permitting the holder to pass through a country but not to stay
there. (See also sense 1c).

1943 G. GREENE Ministry of Fear II. ii. 144 The place was as
comfortless as a *transit camp. 1946 E. LINKLATER Private Angelo xiii.
151 [He] made his escape..from a transit camp for prisoners of war
near Bari. 1956 WALLIS & BLAIR Thunder Above (1959) xi. 113 There were
25,000 East German refugees in West Berlin, living in transit camps
built to accommodate 13,000. 1980 D. LODGE How Far can you Go? i. 7
Purgatory was a kind of penitential transit camp on the way to the
gates of Heaven.
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1843 Penny Cycl. XXV. 133/1 A *transit circle may be made to answer
both purposes. 1897 Edin. Rev. July 68 In 1851 a new transit circle,
of great optical power and enormous mechanical stability, superseded
Troughton's master~piece of 1812.
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1843 Penny Cycl. XXV. 130/1 To have a second clock called a
journeyman, which strikes loudly and speaks as it were for the
*transit clock.
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1845 R. BROWN in Mem. ii. (1866) 28 We got into one of the *Transit
Company's vans.
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1887 C. A. MOLONEY Forestry W. Afr. 248 The Public Works Department of
each Colony offers a ready *transit-depot for such contributions.
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1776 ADAM SMITH W.N. V. ii. II. 515 In some small states duties..are
imposed upon goods carried across the territory..from one foreign
country to another. These are in some countries called
*transit-duties. 1809 State Papers in Ann. Reg. 697/1 The transit
duties on the goods thus imported or exported.
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1812 WOODHOUSE Astron. vi. 32 It may be used as a *transit instrument:
that is, the presence of a star on the meridian may be ascertained by
it.
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1894 HARDY Life's Little Ironies 179 For South Wessex, the year [sc.
1851] formed in many ways an extraordinary chronological frontier or
*transit-line, at which there occurred what one might call a precipice
in Time.
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1962 J. FLEMING When I grow Rich iii. 43 After the arrival of the jet,
the *transit lounge had filled up with people. 1983 Jetaway (Air New
Zealand) Sept.-Oct. 28/2 Transit lounge for 500 passengers who are
transferring flights or have no need to go through customs.
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1873 *Transit man [see PACKER1 3c]. 1971 Islander (Victoria, B.C.) 8
May 12/1 Harry, a young transit man, had his bed roll next to the
Bella Coola trapper.
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1889 Pall Mall Gaz. 2 Sept. 7/3 Less..than it cost foreigners to bring
it to Pakhio under *transit-pass
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1955 E. BOWEN World of Love xi. 223 They let the *transit passengers
off first. 1972 J. POTTER Going West 17 Transit passengers were
encouraged to alight for the stopover.
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1861 J. NICHOL in Mem. (1896) 37 As regular as the *transit-room clock.
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1862 Catal. Internat. Exhib. II. XIII. 3 A first-rate 6-inch *transit
theodolite,..with vertical and horizontal circles.
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1948 MARTIN & HYNES Clin. Endocrinol. iv. 70 The intestinal
*transit-time is decreased with the production of loose stools or
frank diarrha. 1962 SIMPSON & RICHARDS Physical Princ. Junction
Transistors vii. 117 When operation at higher frequencies is
considered these complexities increase many-fold due chiefly to
transit-time effects in the flow of minority carriers. 1974 Brit. Med.
Jrnl. 19 Jan. 108/2 Constipation is best thought of not in terms of
transit-time through the gut..but rather the type of faeces produced.
1975 D. G. FINK Electronics Engineers' Handbk. VII. 27 Transit time is
a large factor in considering the upper frequency limitation of
electron tubes.
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1803 Edin. Rev. III. 243 Those..nations whose wealth has been promoted
by the *transit trade. 1852 CONYBEARE & H. St. Paul (1862) II. xxiii.
329 The Valley of the Nile was the channel of an active transit trade
in spices, dyes, jewels, and perfumes.
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1903 Expositor May 335 Jerusalem had no natural command of the *transit-traffic.
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1925 C. CONNOLLY Let. May in Romantic Friendship (1975) 81, I..had got
as far as sending my passport up for some *transit visas. 1979 W. H.
CANAWAY Solid Gold Buddha xx. 134 Miller went to the Burmese
Embassy..and got his transit visa.
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1904 Q. Rev. Oct. 341 The trade-winds..contribute greatly to the
salubrity and comfort of this *transit-way.
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