indirect

UK/ˌɪn.daɪˈɹɛkt/US/ˌɪn.dɪˈɹɛkt/

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,178 of 15,258mostly written

Indirect means not going straight to the point or the place. An indirect route, an indirect question, indirect costs.

In grammar, indirect speech reports what somebody said without quoting it, which shifts the tense back a step. In business, indirect costs are the ones that cannot be traced to a single product, such as rent and heating.

Definitions of indirect

1adjectiveindirectNot going straight to the point or the place.B2+
“She gave an indirect answer, so I still don't know if she's coming.”

indirect is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin indirectus is in-, not, plus directus, straight, from dirigere, to set straight.

Latin
indirectus — not direct
Middle French
indirect
English, today
indirect

From Middle French indirect, from Latin indirectus (“not direct”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

indirect in the wild

Internal mixture formation systems can be separated into several varieties of "direct" and "indirect" injection; the most common is common rail injection, a form of direct injection.
Fuel injection
While there is superficial overlap, the indirect model is unlike the standpoint of idealism, which holds that only ideas are real, but there are no mind-independent objects.
Direct and indirect realism
The indirect Coombs test detects antibodies that are floating freely in the blood.
Coombs test
The indirect Coombs test is used in prenatal testing of pregnant women and in testing prior to a blood transfusion.
Coombs test
Data published by OECD show that the average indirect tax share of total tax revenue for all member countries in 2018 was 32.7% with standard deviation 7.9%.
Indirect tax

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

indirectly

← Vocabulary