Niclas answered correctly, but I'll give more background to the notion of transitivity in case you are interested. I'll also describe "transitive closures" and "reflexive transitive closures" as you're bound to run into those terms before long.
'transitive' is a mathematical propery of binary relations (relations between two sets of elements). A binary relation R is transitive provided that for all x, y, z:
x R y and y R z implies x R z
For example, the relation 'divides' between whole numbers is transitive because if x divides y and y divides z then x divides z. On the other hand, not all binary relations are transitive. For example, take the relation 'childOf' between people. We could have:
Sarah childOf Glyn and Glyn childOf Stanley
but it is not true that Sarah childOf Stanley (although she is his grand-child). But now you can define another relation 'descendentOf' which composes together the childOf relation arbitrarily many times. Now:
Sarah descendentOf Stanley
(and Sarah descendentOf Glyn and Glyn descendentOf Stanley.) The transitive relation 'descendentOf' is known as the "transitive closure" of 'childOf'. Actually, you can take any non-transitive relation and form its transitive closure to produce a transitive relation. (You can do the same to a transitive relation, but the transitive closure is the same as the original relation.)
Lastly, a relation R is reflexive if for each element x it deals with (I'll spare you the mathematical terms), x R x. You can take any binary relation R and define another relation from the transitive closure of R together with all the relationships x R x and you get a reflexive transitive relation which is called, unsurprisingly, the "reflexive transitive closure" of R.
So, to answer your question
> What is a "transitive" dependency?
I would say it is a relationship in the transitive closure of the "depends on" relation.
Glyn
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