Most browser support custom keywords for "search engines". For example in Opera you can rightclick any form field(?) and "create search". Enter a keyword like w for Wikipedia and from now on you can simply enter "w whatever" in the address bar. That way you truly have no middleman.

In Firefox this feature is called "keymarks" I think. Add a bookmark from a search result page, then edit it, replace the searched string with %s and add the keymark (letter or short string, same as with Opera).

Thank you for that, I hadn't found that feature. It specifically isn't working for me with wikipedia or google maps, although it works beautifully for a couple other test cases.