A distal cause that is an event or circumstance that is remote to the point or time of an event or condition, having precipitated other events or circumstances leading to the result.
Contrast with proximate cause, root cause, and causal factor. For distal causes where the separation factor is time alone, see latent1.
Footnotes- Causes (factors) can propagate through time without pausing in any intermediate condition (and, therefore, not latent) but distal in some other degree of freedom (such as space).[↩]