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Definition of "directly" []

  • In a direct line or manner; straight: The road runs directly north. (adverb)
  • Without anyone or anything intervening: directly responsible. (adverb)
  • Exactly or totally: directly opposite. (adverb)
  • At once; instantly: Leave directly. (adverb)
  • Candidly; frankly: answered very directly. (adverb)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "directly" in a sentence
  • "I disagree with the comparison - parents are not victims in the sense of being victims, but they are more directly comparable to your example of victim, inasmuch as their experience is as profoundly life-altering facing death firsthand, facing birth - *directly* comparable."
  • "We do not know them directly, in some sense of ˜directly™, so we don't have intuitive, i.e., sense-derived knowledge of them."
  • "His experiments conclusively show that an idea is not only "associated" directly with the one that follows it, and with the rest _through that_, but that it is _directly_ associated with _all_ that are near it, though in unequal degrees."