indirect

Pluralindirects

Formsindirects, indirecting, indirected

1. 1
   adjective

   Coming about as a secondary result rather than from an obvious or immediate cause.

   Cleaner air was an indirect benefit of the new bus routes.

   The policy produced indirect savings by reducing later repair costs.

   Similarincidental, secondary, collateral

   Oppositedirect, immediate

2. 2
   adjective

   Following a roundabout course rather than the quickest, shortest, or most convenient path.

   The river takes an indirect path through the valley before reaching the sea.

   Her flight home was indirect, with two long layovers along the way.

   Similarcircuitous

   Oppositedirect, straight

3. 3
   adjective

   Not aimed straight at its target or subject, with its real purpose seeming secondary or hard to make out.

   The senator's indirect remarks hinted at a scandal without ever naming anyone.

   She offered an indirect criticism wrapped inside a compliment.

   Similaroblique, veiled, implicit, roundabout

   Oppositedirect, explicit, blunt, straightforward

4. 4
   adjective

   Not direct; happening or done through something or someone else rather than straight on.

   The company offered indirect support by funding a partner charity.

   Their influence on the decision was real but entirely indirect.

   Similarcircuitous

   Oppositedirect

   Note

   The broad sense behind the rest. It came into English from Middle French indirect and, before that, from Late Latin indirectus, "not direct." It sits naturally with words about communication: indirect statements, indirect questions, indirect messages. Thomas Szasz, in The Myth of Mental Illness (1974), treats such messages as a middle path between silence and speech too blunt to be allowed.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A business expense that cannot be traced to a single product, project, or activity, such as rent, utilities, or administrative salaries.

   The budget grouped every indirect under a single overhead line.

   Cutting staff did little because most of the plant's cost lay in fixed indirects.

   Similaroverhead

   Note

   Cost accountants use the adjective as a noun, almost always in the plural, where indirects stand opposite directs. Peter Watermeyer's Handbook for Process Plant Project Engineers (2002) splits a supplier's costs into two groups. The directs are labor, material and components. The indirects are customized engineering, sales and factory overheads. The noun belongs to budgets and estimates. In general prose, indirect costs or overheads is the safer phrase.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To access a value through indirection, following a pointer or reference to reach the data it identifies.

   The routine indirects each pointer before reading the memory it names.

   Low-level code must indirect the reference to retrieve the underlying record.

   Similardereference

   Note

   Programmers' shorthand built from indirection, and it inflects as a regular verb: indirects, indirecting, indirected. It takes through to name the route, as when Cay S. Horstmann (1997) writes of indirecting through the _rep pointer. The past participle also works as an adjective, as in an indirected parallel read. Dereference names the same operation.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A heating device concealed within or behind a building's fabric that warms a space by heating circulating air rather than by radiant heat from an exposed surface.

   Architects of the era favored an indirect because it heated rooms without an exposed unit.

   The basement plant fed a row of indirects serving the upper floors.

   Note

   A heating engineer's clipping of indirect radiator, the unit that warms air fed through a duct instead of standing exposed in the room. William S. Monroe's Steam Heating and Ventilation (1902) still writes the phrase out in full. He notes that such radiators were seldom installed except for rooms on the first or second floors. Outside period trade writing, the full phrase is clearer.

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