[ad. L. trājectus a passing over, a place for crossing, f. trājicĕre, trāicĕre to throw across, f. trans across + jacĕre to throw. So F. trajet, traject (16th c.).]
1. A way or place of crossing over; esp. a place where boats cross a river, strait, or the like; a ferry. Less commonly, a route for crossing a tract of land.
a. 1552. Leland, Itin. (1907), I. 51. The next trajectus from Kingston to the shore of Humbre in Lincolnshir is about a 3 mile to a place caullid Golflete. Yet the communer traject is from Kingeston to Berton apon Humber.
1657. Thornley, trans. Longus’ Daphnis & Chloe, 39. The Bosphori; the Trajects, or the narrow Seas, swam over by Oxen.
1798. Pye, Naucratia, I. 57. Though his feet the traject often trace.
1810. Scott, Lett. to Morrit, 9 Aug., in Lockhart. He would not again put foot in a boat till he had discovered the shortest possible traject.
1904. Sci. Amer., Supp. 5 March, 23553/3. As to the new Bagdad line, two different trajects were proposed.
2. The action or an act of crossing over water, land, a chasm, etc.; passage.
1774. Pennant, Tour Scot. in 1772, 292. Land after a traject of four miles.
1828. A. Clarke, in Life, xiii. (1840), 458. After a mile’s traject [we] were in Lerwick.
1852. Mundy, Our Antipodes (1857), 30. We crossed the river by a punt running on a rope. The mode of traject is very inconvenient.
1875. Wond. Phys. World, I. iv. 129. The only means of traject across these crevasses.
1882. E. O’Donovan, Merv Oasis, I. 124. During the whole traject I met with no living things save an enormous black eagle.
b. The action of carrying or conveying across; transport; transference. rare.
1876. Athenæum, 18 Nov., 655/3. At the best, however, this traject was but as that of the germ of life which Sir William Thomson, in a famous discourse, suggested had been carried to this earth from some other sphere by meteoric agency.
3. = TRAJECTORY sb. 1. rare.
1839. I. Taylor, Sat. Even., x. 118. The all-prevading principle of gravitation, the transmission of light, and the traject of comets, are manifest alliances which give oneness, continuity, and relation, to the countless assemblage of worlds around us.
