How to Use transitive in a Sentence

transitive

adjective
  • In “I like pie” and “She makes hats,” the verbs “like” and “makes” are transitive.
  • The verb fight is transitive here and does have an object.
    Quanta Magazine, 16 May 2019
  • Arguments based in transitive nature can get down in the weeds.
    Fletcher Page, Cincinnati.com, 5 Dec. 2019
  • The transitive-property arguments – if the last-place team in the Big East can beat the No. 4 team in America, etc. etc.
    Patrick Brennan, Cincinnati.com, 3 Feb. 2018
  • By the transitive property of wins, that means the Raiders have a shot at keeping Atlantic’s offense at bay.
    Adam Lichtenstein, sun-sentinel.com, 8 Sep. 2021
  • By the transitive property, the winner of this last election must be the best candidate ...
    Laura Feiveson, Popular Mechanics, 17 July 2020
  • By the transitive property, a room full of Colombians had come to cheer for an iconic German side.
    Brad Rickman, Condé Nast Traveler, 15 June 2018
  • All of this begs the question: how can a defense stop Bernhardt and — by transitive property — the Terps offense?
    Edward Lee, baltimoresun.com, 27 May 2021
  • The female hustle rapper has been dishing out her own style of transitive female rap since 2016.
    Kayla Cockrel, Detroit Free Press, 29 Oct. 2019
  • In the game of sports transitive theory, Notre Dame’s task in beating Boston College today just got tougher.
    Teddy Greenstein, chicagotribune.com, 16 Sep. 2017
  • But if the Texans take it to the Patriots, then get whupped in that same yard by Denver ... then the Broncos are championship-caliber by virtue of the transitive property, right?
    Nate Davis, USA TODAY, 9 Dec. 2019
  • The sense of destiny that shrouds her characters gives them—and, by some transitive property, the reader—an archaic grandeur of feeling.
    Alice Gregory, The New Yorker, 9 Nov. 2020
  • By the transitive property of celebrity, actors can be politicians.
    Kenzie Bryant, Vanities, 20 Apr. 2017
  • In one paper, Choi’s team used an algorithm to sift through more than seven hundred movie scripts and count the transitive verbs connoting power and agency.
    Matthew Hutson, The New Yorker, 5 Apr. 2022
  • By the transitive property of celebrity, actors can be politicians.
    Kenzie Bryant, Vanities, 20 Apr. 2017
  • Therefore, by the transitive property, anyone who is younger than me is definitely a child.
    Monica McDonough, The New Yorker, 1 Mar. 2023
  • Through the transitive property, UCF declared itself the real national champions, and that includes the team’s Twitter name and bio.
    Michelle R. Martinelli, For The Win, 3 Jan. 2018
  • But there’s a transitive property to approval and confidence.
    Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic, 15 Nov. 2022
  • In fact, the above argument involving the triangle, the rectangle and the square shows that scissors congruence is also transitive.
    Patrick Honner, Quanta Magazine, 21 Nov. 2022
  • And if industry dynamics are not transitive across the board, expertise isn’t, either.
    Bess Levin, vanityfair.com, 30 Mar. 2017
  • And if industry dynamics are not transitive across the board, expertise isn’t, either.
    Bess Levin, The Hive, 30 Mar. 2017
  • By the transitive property, James Comey is real America?
    Heather Schwedel, Slate Magazine, 23 Oct. 2017
  • Even those bigwigs paid obeisance to someone and, eventually, by the transitive property of Saudi deference, to the king himself.
    Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 3 Mar. 2022
  • By the transitive property, Detroit should be favored over Minnesota.
    Tyler J. Davis, Detroit Free Press, 25 Sep. 2022
  • Bakhtin shows us what fires the world’s admiration of Zelensky: that dignity is available to those who smile at degradation, and that courage and comedy have a transitive relationship.
    Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 13 Mar. 2022
  • Lorenzo von Fersen and Juan Delius, then both at Bochum, demonstrated that pigeons can memorize 725 abstract patterns and use transitive inference logic.
    Onur Güntürkün, Scientific American, 1 Jan. 2020
  • Zach Morrison: Remember the transitive property in middle school math class?
    Paul Talbot, Forbes, 15 Apr. 2021
  • Thus, by the analyst’s clumsy use of the transitive property, the Quincy Institute and its fellow travelers are Nazi sympathizers.
    Jacob Silverman, The New Republic, 17 Dec. 2020
  • Apply the transitive property and boom, sandwiches don’t exist without a serrated knife.
    Elaheh Nozari, Bon Appetit, 26 Feb. 2018
  • While the transitive property doesn’t perfectly predict future outcomes, the Gators’ latest performances are lagging behind those of Bama.
    Edgar Thompson, orlandosentinel.com, 10 Dec. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'transitive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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