Adjective

transitive (not comparable)

Positive transitive

Comparative not comparable

Superlative none (absolute)

1. 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. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

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. - John Stuart Mill

3. (grammar): 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)

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

4. (set theory): 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):
• (grammar): intransitive
• (set theory): intransitive, nontransitive

Derived terms

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

The term transitivity may refer to:

In grammar

• Transitivity (grammatical category)
• Transitive verb, when a verb takes an object
• Intransitive verb

In logic and mathematics

• Transitive relation, a binary relation
• Transitive group action
• Ergodic theory, a group action that is metrically transitive
• Transitive set
• Arc-transitive graph
• Edge-transitive graph
• Vertex-transitive graph

Other

• Transitive Corporation, a computer software firm based in Manchester, England and Los Gatos, California