English

Etymology

Pronunciation

Adjective

1. Making a transit or passage.

   Quotations

   • For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

2. Affected by transference of signification.

   Quotations

   • By far the greater part of the transitive or derivative applications of words depend on casual and unaccountable caprices of the feelings or the fancy. - John Stuart Mill

3. : Of a verb, that takes an object or objects. (compare with: intransitive.)
   • I read the book. (read is a transitive verb)
   • I read. (read is an intransitive verb)

   Quotations

   • Men have tried to turn "revolutionise" from a transitive to an intransitive verb. — G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

4. : Of a relation R on a set S, such that if xRy and yRz, then xRz for all members x, y and z of S (that is, if the relation applies from one element to a second, and from the second to a third, then it also applies from the first element to the third).

   "Is an ancestor of" is a transitive relation.

Antonyms

• (making a transit or passage):
• (affected by transference of signification):
• : intransitive
• : intransitive, nontransitive

Translations