indirect

English

Etymology

From Middle French indirect, from Late Latin indirectus.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌɪndaɪˈɹɛkt/, /ˌɪndɪˈɹɛkt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˌɪndəˈɹɛkt/, /ˌɪndaɪˈɹɛkt/
• Rhymes: -ɛkt

Adjective

indirect (comparative more indirect, superlative most indirect)

1. Not direct:
   1. Not of obvious or immediate cause, but as a secondary result.

      The direct result of socialising every day in the bars may be happiness and meeting new people, but the indirect results could be addiction, or even poverty.

   2. Not focused straight at the target or subject; whose true aim appears secondary or obscure.

      While not mentioning any of their competitors by name, the CEO made some indirect statements that they were acting immorally.

      Se asked him some indirect questions to ascertain whether he was single.

      • 1974, Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., chapter 8, in The Myth of Mental Illness, →ISBN, pages 139–140:

        Indirect messages permit communicative contacts when, without them, the alternatives would be total inhibition, silence, and solitude on the one hand, or, on the other, communicative behavior that is direct, offensive, and hence forbidden. This is a painful choice. In actual practice, neither alternative is likely to result in the gratification of personal or sexual needs. In this dilemma, indirect communications provide a useful compromise. As an early move in the dating game, the young man might invite the young woman to dinner or to the movies.

   3. Not involving the quickest, shortest, or most convenient path; oblique.

      In an effort to beat the traffic jams, they opted to take an indirect route to their destination.

   4. (mathematics, logic, of a proof) Employing argument by contradiction; making use the law of the excluded middle; arguing via the contrapositive.
2. Figuratively
   1. (archiac) Not straightforward, fair, or honest; corrupt.
      • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 312, column 2:

        Did you, by indirect, and forced courſes / Subdue, and poyſon this tong Maides affections? / Or came it by requeſt, and ſuch faire queſtion / As ſoule, to ſoule affordeth?

Antonyms

• direct

Derived terms

Related terms

• indirection

Translations

Noun

indirect (plural indirects)

1. (finance) An indirect cost.
   • 2002, Peter Watermeyer, Handbook for Process Plant Project Engineers:

     In the case of a piece of equipment such as a pump, the supplier's costs may be broken down into the directs of labour, material, and component costs on the one hand, and the indirects of customized engineering, sales, factory overheads, and order management costs on the other.

   • 2010, Anna M. Gil-Lafuente and José M. Merigó (editos), Computational Intelligence in Business and Economics

     Gradually analytical thinking was taking a greater awareness of the importance it took for all the investigation system of the possible identification or traceability of fixed costs and, in general, of the indirects of other times.

2. An indirect radiator
   • 1902, William S. Monroe, “Chapter 4”, in Steam Heating and Ventilation:

     Indirect radiators are seldom installed except for rooms on the first or second floors; and in the former case the duct, D, is very short, and in the latter it is usually from 12 to 16 feet long. It should be stated in this connection that indirects of large size should be spread out as much as possible so as to give a large area against the current of air.

Verb

indirect (third-person singular simple present indirects, present participle indirecting, simple past and past participle indirected)

1. (programming, transitive) To access by means of indirection; to dereference.
   • 1997, Cay S. Horstmann, Practical Object-Oriented Development in C++ and Java, page 385:

     The X operations access the data fields by indirecting through the _rep pointer.

   • 2012, Geerd-R. Hoffmann, Dimitris K. Maretis, The Dawn of Massively Parallel Processing in Meteorology:

     These correspond to an indirected parallel write and an indirected parallel read operation respectively.

Anagrams

• indicter, reindict

French

Etymology

From in- +‎ direct.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɛ̃.di.ʁɛkt/

• Audio

  (file)

Adjective

indirect (feminine indirecte, masculine plural indirects, feminine plural indirectes)

1. indirect

Derived terms

• discours indirect
• mesure indirecte
• objet indirect

Further reading

• “indirect”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French indirect, from Latin indirectus. Equivalent to in- +‎ direct.

Adjective

indirect m or n (feminine singular indirectă, masculine plural indirecți, feminine and neuter plural indirecte)

1. indirect

Declension