INTRANSITIVE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Intransitive

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adjective

Intransitive adj.

Not passing farther; kept; detained. (R.) "And then it is for the image's sake and so far is intransitive; but whatever is paid more to the image is transitive and passes further."

(Gram.) Not transitive; not passing over to an object; expressing an action or state that is limited to the agent or subject, or, in other words, an action which does not require an object to complete the sense; as, an intransitive verb, e. g., the bird flies; the dog runs. Note: Intransitive verbs have no passive form. Some verbs which appear at first sight to be intransitive are in reality, or were originally, transitive verbs with a reflexive or other object omitted; as, he keeps (i. e., himself) aloof from danger. Intransitive verbs may take a noun of kindred signification for a cognate object; as, he died the death of a hero; he dreamed a dream. Some intransitive verbs, by the addition of a preposition, become transitive, and so admit of a passive voice; as, the man laughed at; he was laughed at by the man.

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Etymology of 'Intransitive'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Intransitive" Quotes from Famous Books

... cost, while Garrison was for truth at any cost. These pro-slavery critics were not necessarily wanting in good feelings to the slaves, or lacking in a sense of the justice of their cause. But the feelings and the sense were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to that terrible reality, the American slave. The indignation of such people exceeded all bounds when contemplating wrongs in the abstract, iniquity in the abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood and habited in broadcloth and ...

— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... though they do not regularly admit of a Passive Voice, yet are used impersonally in the 3d Pers. Sing. of the Passive Tenses. This impersonal use of the Passive of intransitive Verbs is founded on the same principle with the Latin Impersonals concurritur, pugnatum est, {106} &c., which are equivalent to concursus fit, pugna facta est. So in Gaelic, gluaisfear leam, I will move, Psal. cxvi. 9; gluaisfear ...

— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... tenses only, an imperfect and a present, which were distinguished in the transitive verb by the place of the personal subject element: dakigu, "we are knowing it" (gu, i.e. we), and ginaki, "we were knowing it"; in the intransitive by a nasalization of the radical: niz, "I am"; nintz, "I was." In modern times a conjectural future has been derived by adding the suffix ke, dakiket, "I will, shall or probably can know it." No proper moods are known, but subjunctive or conjunctive forms are formed ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various