Definition of: intransitive verb

A verb whose action is not transferred to an object but terminates in the subject or doer. Waits, sleeps, dreams, grows, are intransitive in the following: the man waits, he sleeps, he dreams, the grass grows. Intransitive verbs become transitive only with a cognate object: I dreamed a dream; to sleep the sleep of the just; to die a soldier's death.