Other forms: directed, directing, directs
Direct means going straight there, with nothing in between. No changes, no detours, no middleman.
Travel uses it constantly, and a direct train or a direct flight goes without you having to move. It also describes manner, where being direct means saying the thing plainly, and that is usually a compliment. As a verb it means to aim something or to give instructions, which is why a film has a director. Grammar has direct speech, the actual words in quotation marks, as against reported speech.
1adjectivedirectGoing straight to a destination with nothing in between.~78%
“There is a direct train to the coast.”
2adjectiveplainPlain and straightforward in manner.~2%
“She was very direct about what she wanted.”
3verbaimTo aim something at, or to guide people.~20%
“He directed the beam into the corner.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Direct is Latin dīrigō, to straighten, made of dis, apart, and regō, to make straight or to rule. To direct somebody is to set them on a straight line.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₃reǵ-
Latin
dīrēctus
English, today
direct
Built from
Borrowed from Latin dīrēctus, perfect passive participle of dīrigō (“straighten, direct”), from dis- (“asunder, in pieces, apart, in two”) + regō (“make straight, rule”). Compare dress. a doublet of derecho. For the meaning development compare with напра́вить (“to direct, to turn, to aim, to level, to point”), отпра́вить (“to send, to dispatch, to forward”) connected with пра́вить (“to govern, to rule, to drive, to steer”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA