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Indirect vs Null - What's the difference?

indirect | null |

As an adjective indirect

is not direct; roundabout; deceiving; setting a trap; confusing.

As a noun null is

zero, nil; the cardinal number before einn.

indirect

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Not direct; roundabout; deceiving; setting a trap; confusing.
  • * '>citation
  • Indirect' messages permit communicative contacts when,
    without them, the alternatives would be total inhibition, si-
    lence, and solitude on the one hand, or, on the other, com-
    municative 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 pro-
    vide 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. These communications are polyvalent: both
    the invitation and the response to it have several "levels" of
    meaning. One is the level of the overt message—that is,
    whether they will have dinner together, go to a movie, and so
    forth. Another, more covert, level pertains to the question of
    sexual activity: acceptance of the dinner invitation implies
    that sexual overtures might perhaps follow. Conversely, rejec-
    tion of the invitation means not only refusal of companionship
    for dinner but also of the possibility of further sexual explora-
    tion. There may be still other levels of meaning. For example,
    acceptance of the dinner invitation may be interpreted as a
    sign of personal or sexual worth and hence grounds for
    increased self-esteem, whereas its rejection may mean the
    opposite and generate feelings of worthlessness.

    Antonyms

    * direct

    Derived terms

    * indirect speech * indirect object

    null

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A non-existent or empty value or set of values.
  • Zero]] quantity of [[expression, expressions; nothing.
  • (Francis Bacon)
  • Something that has no force or meaning.
  • (computing) the ASCII or Unicode character (), represented by a zero value, that indicates no character and is sometimes used as a string terminator.
  • (computing) the attribute of an entity that has no valid value.
  • Since no date of birth was entered for the patient, his age is null .
  • One of the beads in nulled work.
  • (statistics) null hypothesis
  • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Having no validity, "null and void"
  • insignificant
  • * 1924 , Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove :
  • In proportion as we descend the social scale our snobbishness fastens on to mere nothings which are perhaps no more null than the distinctions observed by the aristocracy, but, being more obscure, more peculiar to the individual, take us more by surprise.
  • absent or non-existent
  • (mathematics) of the null set
  • (mathematics) of or comprising a value of precisely zero
  • (genetics, of a mutation) causing a complete loss of gene function, amorphic.
  • Derived terms

    * nullity

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • to nullify; to annul
  • (Milton)

    See also

    * nil ----