Definition of "intransitive" [in•tran•si•tive]

• Designating a verb or verb construction that does not require or cannot take a direct object, as snow or sleep. (adjective)
• An intransitive verb. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "His theory, which consisted of four major stages and multiple substages, also set the ground rules for future stage theories: they are hierarchical, in that later stages grow out of earlier ones, and they are intransitive, that is, unable to be reordered."
• "There is an 'intransitive' element in us, a habit of doing things that have significance."
• "Some transitive verbs have English meanings which do not differ in form from the "intransitive" English verbs to which they are related"