Talk:immediate

"immediate" meaning "obvious"

"It is immediate from this that measurement in general will be non-deterministic." (from the Wikipedia article on quantum indeterminacy) Google gives more examples of this usage, but I'm not sure if "immediate" is only used in this sense in a science context.Pelzflorian (talk) 16:13, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it is mostly scientific and philosophy. Maybe it will reach a wider audience eventually. I think of it as meaning either "self-evident" or "trivially following from the previous". Its use reminds me of the legendary line from many mathematics texts: "The proof is left as an exercise for the reader" or the cartoon sequence in which a lecturer in front of a complex-looking proof on a blackboard says "This is obvious.", pauses, scratches his head, leaves the room, comes back the next class session and says: "Yes, it is obvious." DCDuring TALK 17:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

immediate cause

https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/immediate+cause --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:15, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Direct

mediate, its antonym, reads "acting through a mediating agency, indirect". Backinstadiums (talk) 21:26, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Backinstadiums: Sense 2 here is "Very close; direct or adjacent". Immediate has a much broader reference than mediate, though; if you're specifically talking about whether or not there's "a mediating agency" you might use unmediated instead. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:43, 27 January 2023 (UTC)