Transitive vs. Intransitive verbs in English

►Transitive verb contains one or more objects, – a noun or pronoun that receives the action of the verb. The object shows who or what completes the action expressed in the verb. Transitive verbs are divided into 3 types, including mono-transitive verbs, di-transitive verbs, and complex transitive verbs.

Mono-transitive has only one object.

- Yesterday, I bought a cat.

- The cat bit me!

- He broke the toothpick.

- The chef ate his own watermelon soup.

Di-transitive has two or more objects.

- I gave Belinda some biscuits.

- I gave some biscuits to Belinda

Complex transitive has a direct object and an object complement.

- He got Jenny upset.

- Elaine laid the flowers on the table.

Transitive verbs exercises

► Intransitive is a verb that does not contain any object. To recognize these kinds of verbs, we should ask these questions: what is the/did the subject -verb- ? If there is no answer, then the verb in the sentence is an Intransitive Verb.

Here are some examples of an intransitive verb in a sentence:

- The crowd moves across the field in an attempt to see the rock star get into her helicopter.

- We would like to stay longer, but we must leave.

- The cook watched while the new dishwasher surreptitiously picked up the fragments of the broken dish.

=> Here, verbs "moves", "leave", and "watched" are used as an intransitive verbs and take no direct object. some common intransitive verbs in English include, cough, die, dream, go, sit, sneeze, ...

transitive or intransitive verbs exercise 1

State whether the verbs in the following sentences are used transitive or intransitive.

Start Quiz 1

Total Score

Yippee this is correct

Oops you are wrong