Transitive means said of a verb that takes an object. A transitive verb, transitive and intransitive, used transitively.
You hit something, so hit is transitive, while you simply sleep, so sleep is not. Many verbs are both, which is why the label belongs to the use rather than to the word, and in mathematics transitive means a relation that carries through a chain.
1adjectivetransitiveSaid of a verb that takes an object.
“Because enjoy is transitive, you can't just say I enjoyed; you must say what.”
transitive is a quality.
Latin transitivus comes from transire, to go across, from trans plus ire, to go.
Latin
trānsitīvus
English, today
transitive
Built from
From Latin trānsitīvus, from trānsitus, from trāns (“across”) + itus, from eō (“to go”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA