a. (sb.) [ad. late L. transitīvus (Priscian), f. transit- (see TRANSIT) + -īvus, -IVE; in F. transitif (16th c.). With sense 1 cf. OF. transitif transient (13th c. in Godef.).]
† 1. Passing or liable to pass into another condition, changeable, changeful; passing away, transient, transitory. Obs. rare.
1560. Rolland, Crt. Venus, I. 67. Thair waillit weid … Sa gay it was,… Sa wariant to sicht and transitiue.
1625. Brathwait, Five Senses, 296. What availes it thee now to enjoy the transitive honours of this life?
1845. [implied in TRANSITIVENESS].
2. Gram. Of verbs and their construction: Expressing an action that passes over to an object; taking a direct object to complete the sense.
1571. [implied in TRANSITIVELY a].
1590. Stockwood, Rules Constr., 64. A verbe transitiue … is such … as passeth ouer his signification into some other thing, as when I say, ‘I loue God.’
1673. O. Walker, Educ., 153. Others are transient, when the Agent and Patient are divers, and are expressed by Verbs transitives, as striking, heating [etc.].
1845. Stoddart, Gram., in Encycl. Metrop. (1847), I. 48/1. Verbs transitive and intransitive are, in other words, active and neuter; for the verb active is considered as passing over from the agent to the object, whilst the neuter is considered as not passing over.
b. as sb. A transitive verb.
1612. Brinsley, Lud. Lit., 129. That other rule for the Acusatiue after the Verbe, is of Transitiues, whose action passeth into another thing.
3. Philos. Passing out of itself; passing over to or affecting something else; operating beyond itself; = TRANSIENT 2. (Opposed to immanent.)
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, I. i. 5. For all the proprieties of God are infinite, as they are immanent in himselfe, yet in their transitiue and forren effectes are stinted and limited to the modell and state of the creature.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 70. Cold is Active and Transitive into Bodies Adjacent, as well as Heat.
1785. Reid, Intell. Powers, II. xiv. (1803), I. 306. Logicians distinguish two kinds of operations of the mind; the first kind produces no effect without the mind, the last does. The first they call immanent acts; the second transitive.
1893. Fairbairn, Christ in Mod. Theol., II. II. iii. 441. It is of the essence of both to be transitive. Love regards an object whose good it desires; righteousness is the conduct which fulfils the desire of love.
4. Characterized by or involving transition, in various senses: that has something passing through it (obs.); that itself passes through stages; that forms a transition (real, or in thought) between two stages, positions, or conditions; that is in an intermediate stage or position; transitional; intermediate; transformational. Now rare or Obs.
1660. Jer. Taylor, Duct. Dubit., II. ii. rule vi. § 7. An image that is understood to be an image can never be made an idol: or if it can it must be by having the worship of God pass’d thorough it to God;… by being the analogical, the improper, the transitive, the relative (or what shall I call it) object of Divine worship.
1811. Pinkerton, Petralogy, I. 73. This transitive grunstein occurs in the Hartz.
1836. I. Taylor, Phys. The. Another Life, xii. (1847), 166. The preparations that are made by any of the transitive species of animals … for their approaching metamorphosis.
1854. F. Bakewell, Geol., 8. The lower portion, resting on the crystalline rocks, being called the transitive series.
1860. Mayne, Expos. Lex., Transitivus, applied by Werner to rocks or soils that present … the vestiges of organised bodies;… as forming the transition of soils from the first class to those of the third, with which they are nearly related: transitive.
1865. Grote, Plato, I. xvii. 494. The transitive process, above described, represents the successive stages by which every adult mind has been gradually built up from infancy.
5. Of the application of words: Transferred. rare. ? Obs.
1810. D. Stewart, Philos. Ess., II. I. i. 226. The greater part of the transitive or derivative applications of words depend on casual and unaccountable caprices of the feelings or of the fancy.
6. Math. In the theory of groups: see quots.
1890. Cent. Dict., s.v. Group, A group is called doubly, triply, or n times transitive if any set of 2, 3, n elements can be brought to any places.
1902. Encycl. Brit., XXIX. 121/1. If it is possible to find an operation S of the group such that O.S is any assigned one of the set of objects, the group is called transitive in respect of this set of objects. When this is not possible, the group is called intransitive in respect of the set.
