direct vs longitudinal

direct

adj
  • Straight; not crooked, oblique, or circuitous; leading by the short or shortest way to a point or end. 

  • having a single flight number. 

  • Pertaining to, or effected immediately by, action of the people through their votes instead of through one or more representatives or delegates. 

  • Immediate; express; plain; unambiguous. 

  • Proceeding without deviation or interruption. 

  • Straightforward; sincere. 

  • In the line of descent; not collateral. 

  • In the direction of the general planetary motion, or from west to east; in the order of the signs; not retrograde; said of the motion of a celestial body. 

verb
  • To manage, control, steer. 

  • To aim (something) at (something else). 

  • To point out to or show (somebody) the right course or way; to guide, as by pointing out the way. 

  • To point out to with authority; to instruct as a superior; to order. 

adv
  • Directly. 

longitudinal

adj
  • Forward and/or backward, relative to some defined direction. 

  • Relating to length, or to longitude. 

  • Running in the direction of the long axis of a body. 

  • Sampling data over time rather than merely once. 

noun
  • Any longitudinal piece, as in shipbuilding etc. 

  • A railway sleeper lying parallel with the rail. 

How often have the words direct and longitudinal occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )