transitional

adjective

tran·​si·​tion·​al tran(t)-ˈsi-sh(ə-)nəl 

tran(t)-ˈsi-zh(ə-)nəl,

tran-ˈzi-sh(ə-)nəl 

: marked by transition : involving, providing, or consisting of a passage, movement, or change from one state, condition, subject, place, etc., to another

a transitional passage in music

They are often transitional areas between water environments and dry land, and are populated by many trees and plants that can put up with the occasional flood …

—JoAnn Shroyer

The social worlds of neighborhood and village are now less important as transitional zones between home and nonhome settings.

—Theano S. Terkenli

… turning into a civilian coup, that … established a transitional government and prepared the way for multi-party elections.

—Larry Diamond

… an animal about the size of a turkey that they contend was a flightless bird, a transitional figure between some carnivorous dinosaurs and modern birds.

—John Noble Wilford

transitionally adverb

The problem then is to structure a sequence of reforms that is politically consistent with the social mores of the Soviet Union, economically coherent, and transitionally sound …

—Edgar L. Feige

Examples of transitional in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

His transcendent 2022 feature, The Worst Person in the World, is both a romantic comedy and an anti-rom-com, a close study of a woman navigating a messy transitional period, alive with intergenerational insights and foibles most of us can recognize from some point in our lives. —David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 21 May 2025

Signing Brock Purdy to a five-year contract extension was the most significant move of this transitional offseason. —Dieter Kurtenbach, Mercury News, 20 May 2025

The war must end immediately… And there must be an immediate activation of small beachheads throughout Gaza to create Hamas-free zones from which the Strip’s recovery and hopefully, political transformation and rejuvenation in the transitional period can begin. —Ben Sales, Sun Sentinel, 20 May 2025

Times critic Swed ruminates on the possibility of Salonen playing a transitional role for a couple years while the search continues for a permanent successor. —Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times, 19 May 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1819, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for transitional

• additional
• conditional
• nutritional
• positional
• traditional
• volitional
• compositional
• definitional
• depositional
• dispositional
• intuitional
• nontraditional

Medical Definition

transitional

adjective

tran·​si·​tion·​al

-ˈish-nəl, -ˈizh-ən-ᵊl

1

: of, relating to, or characterized by transition

2

: of, relating to, or being epithelium (as in the urinary bladder) that consists of several layers of soft cuboidal cells which become flattened when stretched (as when the bladder is distended)