Transitive

Pronunciation

Origin

From Latin transitivus, from transitus, from trans ("across") + itus'', from eo ("to go").

Full definition of transitive

Adjective

1. Making a transit or passage.
• unknown date Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet: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.
2. Affected by transference of signification.
• 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.
3. (grammar, of a verb) Taking an object or objects.The English verb "to notice" is a transitive verb, because we say things like "She noticed a problem".
• unknown date G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy:Men have tried to turn "revolutionise" from a transitive to an intransitive verb.
4. (set theory, of a relation on a set) Having the property that if an element x is related to y and y is related to z, then x is necessarily related to z."Is an ancestor of" is a transitive relation: if Alice is an ancestor of Bob, and Bob is an ancestor of Carol, then Alice is an ancestor of Carol.
5. (algebra, of a ) Such that, for any two elements of the acted-upon set, some group element maps the first to the second.

Antonyms

• (grammar, of a verb: taking an object) intransitive
• (set theory, of a relation on a set) intransitive, nontransitive

Derived terms

• ditransitive
• monotransitive
• complex transitive
• transitively
• transitiveness
• transitive verb