- the act or fact of passing across or through; passage from one place to another: The area continues to be affected by the transit of illegal drugs bound for major cities.
- conveyance or transportation of people or goods from one place to another, especially local public transportation: Improving city transit is a high priority for the new mayor.
- a transition or change: The transit of autumn to winter saw woodpecker season in full swing and Canada geese on the move.
- Astronomy.
- the passage of a heavenly body across the meridian of a given location or through the field of a telescope: The experiments lasted long enough for us to detect the transit of black holes with a mass of up to 10 times that of our sun.
- the passage of Mercury or Venus across the disk of the sun, or of a satellite or its shadow across the face of its primary: In June 2012, a NASA webcast enabled the public to view the transit of Venus across the solar disk.
- meridian circle.
- the passage of a planet through one of the twelve houses or divisions of the celestial sphere or across the position held by another planet in a person’s birth chart: The transit of Mars is happening in the third house for you, so expect a shift in things concerning home and family.
- a type of theodolite having a telescope that can be flipped vertically to reverse the direction of view: used for measuring horizontal and often vertical angles, sometimes with the ability to take successive measurements of the same angle and average them for greater accuracy.
- one of a series of satellites for providing positional data to ships and aircraft.
- to pass across or through: Many millions of oil barrels transit the Suez Canal every day. It’s fairly easy to intercept emails as they transit the internet.
- to flip (a telescope) vertically in order to reverse the direction of view.
- to cross (a meridian, celestial body, etc.): Mercury transits the sun about 13 or 14 times each century.
- to pass over, through, into, or out of something: Are you planning on transiting through the United States? Attackers can hijack your data as it transits to and from your system.
- to make a passage across a meridian, celestial body, etc.: The probe was looking for planets transiting across the face of stars.
- See entry at in transit.
- the passage or conveyance of goods or people
- (as modifier)
- a change or transition
- a route
- astronomy
- the passage of a celestial body or satellite across the face of a relatively larger body as seen from the earth
- the apparent passage of a celestial body across the meridian, caused by the earth's diurnal rotation
- the passage of a planet across some special point on the zodiac
- while being conveyed; during passage
- to make a transit through or over (something)
- to make a transit across (a celestial body or the meridian)
- to cause (the telescope of a surveying instrument) to turn over or (of such a telescope) to be turned over in a vertical plane so that it points in the opposite direction
