indirect

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: in=di=rect

CIDE DICTIONARY

indirect, a. [Pref. in- not + direct: cf. F. indirect.].

•  Not direct; not straight or rectilinear; deviating from a direct line or course; circuitous; as, an indirect road.  [1913 Webster]
•  Not tending to an aim, purpose, or result by the plainest course, or by obvious means, but obliquely or consequentially; by remote means; as, an indirect accusation, attack, answer, or proposal.  [1913 Webster]

  "By what bypaths and indirect, crooked ways
  I met this crown."  [1913 Webster]
•  Not straightforward or upright; unfair; dishonest; tending to mislead or deceive.  [1913 Webster]

  "Indirect dealing will be discovered one time or other."  [1913 Webster]
•  Not resulting directly from an act or cause, but more or less remotely connected with or growing out of it; as, indirect results, damages, or claims.  [1913 Webster]
•  Not reaching the end aimed at by the most plain and direct method; as, an indirect proof, demonstration, etc.  [1913 Webster]

Indirect claims, claims for remote or consequential damage. Such claims were presented to and thrown out by the commissioners who arbitrated the damage inflicted on the United States by the Confederate States cruisers built and supplied by Great Britain. -- Indirect demonstration, a mode of demonstration in which proof is given by showing that any other supposition involves an absurdity (reductio ad absurdum), or an impossibility; thus, one quantity may be proved equal to another by showing that it can be neither greater nor less. -- Indirect discourse. (Gram.) See Direct discourse, under Direct. -- Indirect evidence, evidence or testimony which is circumstantial or inferential, but without witness; -- opposed to direct evidence. -- Indirect tax, a tax, such as customs, excises, <-- VAT,-->etc., exacted directly from the merchant, but paid indirectly by the consumer in the higher price demanded for the articles of merchandise.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

indirect, adj.
1 not going straight to the point.
2 (of a route etc.) not straight.
3 not directly sought or aimed at (an indirect result).
4 (of lighting) from a concealed source and diffusely reflected.

Idiom

indirect object Gram. a person or thing affected by a verbal action but not primarily acted on (e.g. him in give him the book). indirect question Gram. a question in reported speech (e.g. they asked who I was). indirect speech (or oration) = reported speech (see REPORT). indirect tax a tax levied on goods and services and not on income or profits.

Derivative

indirectly adv. indirectness n.

Etymology

ME f. OF indirect or med.L indirectus (as IN-(1), DIRECT)

THESAURUS

indirect

O-shaped, aberrant, aberrative, accessory, accidental, additional, adscititious, adventitious, ambagious, amoral, ancillary, artful, backhand, backhanded, calculating, chiseling, circuitous, circular, circumambient, circumlocutional, circumlocutory, collateral, collusive, coming, conscienceless, contingent, corrupt, corrupted, covinous, crafty, criminal, crooked, cunning, dark, deceitful, deflectional, departing, desultory, deviant, deviating, deviative, deviatory, devious, digressive, discursive, dishonest, dishonorable, divagational, divergent, doubtful, dubious, duplicitous, errant, erratic, evasive, eventual, excursive, false, falsehearted, felonious, finagling, final, fishy, fraudulent, furtive, guileful, helical, ill-got, ill-gotten, immoral, incidental, insidious, labyrinthine, last, left-handed, mazy, meandering, not kosher, oblique, orbital, out-of-the-way, periphrastic, planetary, questionable, rambling, rotary, rotten, round, roundabout, roving, scheming, secondary, serpentine, shady, shameless, sharp, shifting, shifty, side, sidelong, sinister, sinistral, sinuous, slippery, snaky, sneaking, sneaky, spiral, stray, subordinate, subsidiary, surreptitious, suspicious, swerving, tortuous, treacherous, trickish, tricky, turning, twisted, twisting, two-faced, ultimate, unconscienced, unconscientious, unconscionable, underhand, underhanded, undirected, unethical, unprincipled, unsavory, unscrupulous, unstraightforward, vagrant, veering, wandering, wily, winding, without remorse, without shame, zigzag

ROGET THESAURUS

indirect

Circuit

N circuit, roundabout way, digression, detour, circumbendibus, ambages, loop, winding, zigzag, circuitous, indirect, roundabout, zigzag, backhanded, by a side wind, by an indirect course, in a roundabout way, from pillar to post.

Deviation

N deviation, swerving, obliquation, warp, refraction, flection, flexion, sweep, deflection, deflexure, declination, diversion, digression, depart from, aberration, divergence, zigzag, detour, divagation, wandering, vagrancy, evagation, bypaths and crooked ways, byroad, sidling, knight's move at chess, deviating, aberrant, errant, excursive, discursive, devious, desultory, loose, rambling, stray, erratic, vagrant, undirected, circuitous, indirect, zigzag, crab-like, astray from, round about, wide of the mark, to the right about, all manner of ways, circuitously, obliquely, sideling, like the move of the knight on a chessboard.

Implication

N latency, implication, latency, inexpression, hidden meaning, occult meaning, occultness, mystery, cabala, anagoge, silence, concealment, more than meets the eye, more than meets the ear, Delphic oracle, le dessous des cartes, undercurrent, implication, logical implication, logical consequence, entailment, allusion, insinuation, innuendo, adumbration, something rotten in the state of Denmark, snake in the grass, secret, darkness, invisibility, imperceptibility, latent, lurking, secret, occult, implied, dormant, abeyant, unapparent, unknown, unseen, in the background, invisible, indiscoverable, dark, impenetrable, unspied, unsuspected, unsaid, unwritten, unpublished, unbreathed, untalked of, untold &c, unsung, unexposed, unproclaimed, undisclosed, unexpressed, not expressed, tacit, undeveloped, solved, unexplained, untraced, undiscovered, untracked, unexplored, uninvented, indirect, crooked, inferential, by inference, by implication, implicit, constructive, allusive, covert, muffled, steganographic, understood, underhand, underground, delitescent, concealed, by a side wind, sub silentio, in the background, behind the scenes, behind one's back, on the tip of one's tongue, secretly, between the lines, thereby hangs a tale, tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus, where there's smoke, there's fire.