indirect

comparative more indirect · superlative most indirect

1. Not direct

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

   2 more examples

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

   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.

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

   Synonyms: circuitous

2. 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.

      Synonyms: circuitous

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

      Synonyms: circuitous

   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.

      Synonyms: circuitous

   4. human sciencesEmploying argument by contradiction; making use the law of the excluded middle; arguing via the contrapositive.

      Synonyms: circuitous

3. Figuratively
   1. archaicNot straightforward, fair, or honest; corrupt.

      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?

      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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], page 312, column 2

plural indirects

1. businessAn indirect cost.

   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.

   2002, Peter Watermeyer, Handbook for Process Plant Project Engineers

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   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.

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   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.

   1902, William S. Monroe, “Chapter 4”, in Steam Heating and Ventilation

present singular third person indirects · participle present indirecting · participle past indirected · past indirected

1. transitivecomputingTo access by means of indirection; to dereference.

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

   1997, Cay S. Horstmann, Practical Object-Oriented Development in C++ and Java, page 385

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

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