transitive

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Making a transit or passage.

   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. 2
   adj

   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. 3
   adj

   Taking a direct object or objects.

   The English verb "to notice" is a transitive verb, because we say things like "She noticed a problem".

4. 4
   adj

   Having the property that if an element a is related to b and b is related to c, then a is necessarily related to c.

   "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. 5
   noun

   A transitive verb.

   This means that subcategorization properties do not allow us to distinguish between transitives and intransitives (both types of verbs are allowed, but not obliged, to take a direct object).

6. 6
   adj

   designating a verb that requires a direct object to complete the meaning

7. 7
   noun

   a verb (or verb construction) that requires an object in order to be grammatical

8. 8
   adj

   Such that, for any two elements of the acted-upon set, some group element maps the first to the second.

Etymology

From Latin trānsitīvus, from trānsitus, from trāns (“across”) + itus, from eō (“to go”).