From Latin _transitivus_, from _transitus_, from _trans_ (“across”) + _itus__, from eo (“to go”)._

TRANSITIVE (_not comparable_) * Making a transit or passage. * (Can we date this quote?) 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. * Affected by transference of signification. * (Can we [[:Category:Requests for quotation/John Stuart Mill|find and add]] a quotation of John Stuart Mill to this entry?)[[Category:Requests for quotation/John Stuart Mill|TRANSITIVE]] 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. * (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"._ * (Can we date this quote?) G. K. Chesterton, _Orthodoxy_: Men have tried to turn "revolutionise" from a TRANSITIVE to an intransitive verb. * (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._ * (algebra, of a group action) 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 TRANSLATIONS DERIVED TERMS * ditransitive * monotransitive * complex transitive * transitively * transitiveness * transitive verb