Definition of "indirect"

indirect

/ˌɪndaɪˈɹɛkt/

adjective
comparative more indirect, superlative most indirect
1. Not direct
  1. Not of obvious or immediate cause, but as a secondary result
  2. Not focused straight at the target or subject, but by more subtle means
    Quotations
    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, pages 139–140
  3. Not involving the quickest, shortest, or most convenient path
noun
plural indirects
1. (finance) An indirect cost.
  Quotations
  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
  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.
  2010, Anna M. Gil-Lafuente and José M. Merigó (editos), Computational Intelligence in Business and Economics
2. An indirect radiator
  Quotations
  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
verb
third-person singular simple present indirects, present participle indirecting, simple past and past participle indirected
1. (programming, transitive) To access by means of indirection; to dereference.
  Quotations
  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
  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