Intransitive or transitive?
intransitive is an adjective meaning “Not transitive: not having, or not taking, a direct object”; transitive is an adjective meaning “Making a transit or passage”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) transitive is about 2.8 times as common as intransitive.
What is the difference between intransitive and transitive?
| intransitive | transitive | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, noun | adjective, noun |
| Meaning | Not transitive: not having, or not taking, a direct object Of a set of dice: containing three dice A, B, and C, with the property that A rolls higher than B more than half the time, and B rolls higher than C more than… An intransitive verb | Making a transit or passage Affected by transference of signification A transitive verb |
| Example | The word "drink" is a transitive verb in "they drink wine", but an intransitive one in "they drink often." | The English verb "to notice" is a transitive verb, because we say things like "She noticed a problem" |
| Pronunciation | /ɪnˈtɹænsətɪv/ /ɪnˈtɹænzətɪv/ | /ˈtɹænzɪtɪv/ |
| In writing | about once in every 5 million words | about once in every 2 million words |
Sources: intransitive and transitive in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of intransitive and transitive
intransitive
- 1
Not transitive: not having, or not taking, a direct object
The word "drink" is a transitive verb in "they drink wine", but an intransitive one in "they drink often."
- 2
An intransitive verb
- 3
Of a set of dice: containing three dice A, B, and C, with the property that A rolls higher than B more than half the time, and B rolls higher than C more than half the time, but lacking the property…
transitive
- 1
Making a transit or passage
- 2
A transitive verb
- 3
Affected by transference of signification
- 4
Taking a direct object or objects
The English verb "to notice" is a transitive verb, because we say things like "She noticed a problem"
- 5
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
- 6
Such that, for any two elements of the acted-upon set, some group element maps the first to the second
- 7
Such that, for any two vertices there exists an automorphism which maps one to the other
- 8
Of a set of dice: not having the intransitive property
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, intransitive or transitive?
intransitive appears about once in every 5 million words; transitive about once in every 2 million words.
intransitive about once in every 5 million wordstransitive about once in every 2 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search intransitive vs transitive?
“intransitive vs transitive” is searched about 880 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“transitive vs intransitive”, “intransitive or transitive”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.