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Approximate   Listen
verb
Approximate  v. t.  (past & past part. approximated; pres. part. approximating)  
1.
To carry or advance near; to cause to approach. "To approximate the inequality of riches to the level of nature."
2.
To come near to; to approach. "The telescope approximates perfection."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Approximate" Quotes from Famous Books



... (Fig. 12) will give some idea of it, but no description can convey even an approximate notion of its flowers, which are produced singly, on short, stout, hairy stems, about 5in. high. For so small a plant the flower is large, more than an inch across when expanded, but usually it keeps of a roundish, bell-shaped form. Its colour ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... attempt to follow out the analogical reasoning of one of the most original and scientific thinkers of our day in Great Britain; but the fact that you recall so correctly the line of argument in a sermon delivered more than a year ago, is certainly complimentary assurance of at least approximate success in my effort." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... uncertain; but there is every probability that it was not till after the death of her mother, in February, 1393, and very likely not till after her father's second marriage, about the following October. The approximate date may be given as 1394-5. Two pardons are recorded of persons accused of murder, June 22nd, 1395, and April 27th, 1396, "at the request of our beloved kinswoman the Countess of Gloucester." There was no Countess of Gloucester at the ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... and purposeful action without further cognition, then it does not involve thought. In such a case the terminus of the sense-awareness is something for mind, but nothing for thought. The sense-perception of some lower forms of life may be conjectured to approximate to this character habitually. Also occasionally our own sense-perception in moments when thought-activity has been lulled to quiescence is not far off the attainment of this ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... of his industry, prosperity, and happiness, look that way. You only get a furtive glance, a kind of clandestine and diagonal peep at him and his doings; and having thus travelled a hundred miles through a fertile country you can form no approximate or satisfactory idea ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... which is each man's highest good;—whether he is, in fact, a man, or whether, in the absence of that perfection of the human form, which should be the end of science and government, he approximates at all,—or undertakes to approximate at all, to the true human type;—whether he be, indeed, a man, in the higher sense of that word, or whether he ranks in the scale of nature, as 'only a nobler kind of vermin,' a man, a noble man, a man with a divine ideal and ambition, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... not be too hard or too soft. An easy practical way of learning to know the approximate quality ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... material world, the more ample the body is, the greater is the good of which itis capable supposing all the parts to be equally perfect. But in the intelligential world, the circles are more excellent and powerful, the more they approximate to the central point, which is God. Thus the first circle, that of the seraphim, corresponds to the ninth sphere, or primum mobile, the second, that of the cherubim, to the eighth sphere, or heaven of fixed stars; the third, or circle of thrones, to the seventh sphere, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... the Egyptian, and which represents the Cushite branch of the Atlantean stock, the sign for n (na) is ; in archaic Phoenician it comes still closer to the S shape, thus, , or in this form, ; we have but to curve these angles to approximate it very closely to the Maya n; in Troy this form was found, . The Samaritan makes it ; the old Hebrew ; the Moab stone inscription gives it ; the later Phoenicians simplified the archaic form still further, until it became ; then ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... recherches sur les Monu-mails qu'on peut attribuer aux six premieres dynasties, pp. 66-84, M. de Rouge's results have been since adopted by all Egyptologists. The table of the IVTH dynasty, restored as far as possible with the approximate dates, is subjoined:— ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... for years to form a shrine for his thought, or whether his awe forbids him to touch his first unconscious formulation of it, there comes a time when all that he can do has been done, and he realizes that he will never approximate his vision more closely than this. Then, indeed, as high as was his rapture during the moment of revelation, so deep is likely to be his discouragement with his powers of creation, for, however fair he may feel his poem to be, it yet does not fill the place of what he has lost. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarreled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behavior to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilized society. Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random sobbing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... somewhat in various sections of the country, we have tried to approximate the general average, so that the suggestions might be as valuable to the housewife in New England as to the housewife in the West or ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller

... voyage I was quite as much in the dark concerning our approximate position as any of the chaps who had never seen salt water before they viewed it from the bad eminence of the CACHALOT's deck. Of course, it was evident that we were bound eastward, but whether to the Indian seas ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... fourth type represents the form to which our four printed stories most closely approximate. As remarked above, it is a combination of the third and the second types. This combination appears to have been developed in Europe, although, as may be seen from the analysis of "Vetalapancavincati," No. 2, it might easily have been suggested by the Sanscrit. Compare ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... out from its source in order to find for it some satisfactory abutment, and in doing this there was that new force, introduced by the vaulting of these added chapels, to be reckoned with in addition. Consequently, to the earlier buttressing more was added. The exact nature and the approximate date of this work are shown by Professor Willis in the sections and plan given in his monograph on the cathedral. The addition to each buttress amounted to an elongation of it as a pierced wing wall which provided lateral support. Upon the end ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... which must combine beauty, purity, meekness and angelic goodness. Only by such a combination could religion and family life be finally reconciled. By such a combination, earthly motherhood could be made to approximate ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... death of Luther in 1545 Melanchthon became the acknowledged head of the Lutheran party. On many questions he was inclined to disagree with the doctrine of his master. His teaching in regard to the Eucharist began to approximate more closely to the views of Calvin, so that the Impanation and Companation theories of Luther lost favour in Germany. The Philippists or Crypto-Calvinists gained ground rapidly in the country, with ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... the great Private Library of Ashur-bani-pal, which that king kept in his palace. The tablets found by Layard in 1852 and by Rassam in 1853 form the unique and magnificent collection of cuneiform tablets in the British Museum, which is now commonly known as the "Kuynjik Collection." The approximate number of the inscribed baked clay tablets and fragments that have come from Kuynjik and are now in the British Museum is 25,073. It is impossible to over-estimate their importance and value from religious, ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge

... at Sparkes near Reno and are of great advantage to Reno merchants. These shops do the general repair work of the Salt Lake Division of the Southern Pacific; they employ between five and six hundred men at an approximate payroll ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... the long life that is before you ends, a hundred ways of accounting for drunkards—heredity, inclination, regular drinking, grief, disappointed love, and all that sort of thing, but all put together they do not begin to approximate the cause I tell you of,—"associating together." It is the associating together of boys, the late nights, the early morning drinks, taken more frequently later on, and lastly the appetite. It is the associating ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... erected from said plans, the charges, instead of being based on the actual cost, will be based on the approximate cost, which is hereby estimated at $——, although the last-mentioned sum is not guaranteed to be the actual cost of said building. Should the actual cost exceed the approximate cost, we will make the necessary changes in the plans, so as to reduce the cost, should you so ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... evidence. In some cases, however, the envelopes have been preserved, and the date is then often provided by the postmarks. These supply fixed points by which the others can be tested; and ultimately all have fallen into line in chronological order, and with at least approximate dates to ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... but in general, they have agreeable countenances: and as to stature, many of them are very tall, though apparently not very robust. Some are of light olive complexion, with straight noses and thin lips; but others, indeed the great number, approximate ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... blessedness—creatures whom he is now and always has been developing into likeness with that Son—a likeness for long to be distant and small, but a likeness to be for ever growing: perhaps never one of them yet, though unspeakably blessed, has had even an approximate idea of the ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... still more rapid. On the other hand, not only has the number of the large agricultural landlords shown no increase whatever, but since the year 1880 or thereabouts their aggregate rental has suffered an actual decrease, having fallen in the approximate proportion of seventy to fifty-two. This shrinkage in the fortunes of the old landed families, except those who were owners of minerals or land near towns, and the multiplication of families newly enriched by business, were, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... "granaries full, can hold out till Easter," that Lord Wolseley's deliberate march—Cairo, September 27; Wady Halfa, October 8; Dongola, November 14; Korti, December 30; Metemmah any day in February, and Khartoum, March 3, and those were the approximate dates of his grand plan of campaign—would have been fully successful, and held up for admiration as a model of skill. Unfortunately, it would not do for the occasion, as Gordon was on the verge of starvation ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... plant food in the soil, methods of tillage, fertilizers used, recurrence of frosts, amount of sunlight, the altitude and latitude of different localities, all have a bearing upon crop production. It is, therefore, very difficult to fix any approximate standard or average production for any particular locality without basing it upon a long series of years. I think, however, that it is a subject worthy of agitation, and it might inspire agriculturists to better work were such an ideal ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... of three seasons. From June on to November it lies hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms; then on until April, chill, quiescent, drinking its scant rain and scanter snows; from April to the hot season again, blossoming, radiant, and seductive. These months are only approximate; later or earlier the rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the Gulf, and the land sets its seasons ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... their forms, combinations, proportions, and qualities, according to which they act for a time, after a given mode; these are afterwards taken from them, to make them act after a different manner. It is thus that Nature makes them expand and change, grow and decline, augment and diminish, approximate and remove, forms and destroys them, according as she finds it requisite to maintain the whole; towards the conservation which this Nature is herself essentially ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... British navy; and, on the contrary, how large the cost incurred for the guardianship of the foreign commerce of Great Britain. In the absence of those authentic data which would warrant the construction of approximate estimates, we are willing, however, as before, to accept the basis of Mr Cobden's—not calculations, but—rough guesses; and as the colonial share of army, navy, and ordnance estimates altogether, he taxes in "from five to six millions," of which four and a half millions, according to a previous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... approximate. The following vegetables may be considered as falling into the "5%" group: Lettuce, string beans, spinach, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, egg plant, cauliflower, tomatoes, asparagus, cucumbers, beet greens, chard, celery, Sauerkraut, ripe olives, kale, rhubarb, ...
— The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes • Lewis Webb Hill

... required bevel is obtained. When a saw cut has been made at each side of the groove, the surplus timber is pared away in the following manner: Cut away portion E, Fig. 319; then cut away portion F, and lastly cut away the apex portion marked G. Continue by this method of paring until the approximate depth is reached. To ensure a correct depth throughout the entire groove, the router plane (or, as it is often called, "the old woman's tooth plane," Fig. ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... conservative point, submitted them to the best informed men in the United States, and then divided those figures by five as my estimate of what I might hope to accomplish as my orchards came into bearing. I have since been obliged to find some excuses for failing to even approximate those conservative figures. I had this year in our orchard, a 35 acre plot of Frotscher trees which is one of the most promising varieties, six years of age, and there were not five pounds of nuts in the whole plot. I have had an orchard of 36 acres, mostly Frotscher and Stewart, go through ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... fine, noble bathroom, white tiled and spotless; and one side of it was occupied by the longest, narrowest bathtub I ever saw. Apparently English bathtubs are constructed on the principle that every Englishman who bathes is nine feet long and about eighteen inches wide, whereas the approximate contrary is frequently the case. Draped over a chair was the biggest, widest, softest bathtowel ever made. Shem, Ham and Japhet could have dried themselves on that bathtowel, and there would still have been ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... that the forms of Nature (by which word forms we mean any of those conditions of Nature which affect the senses of man) are so many approximate representations of the mental conditions of humanity. The outward, commonly called the material, is informed by, or has form in virtue of, the inward or immaterial—in a word, the thought. The forms of ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... to doubt that the hickories will grow anywhere ecological conditions approximate those of their native habitat. This is true in the Pacific coast states. Mr. Julio Grandjean, of Hillerod, Denmark, reports that there are several white hickories, C. alba or C. tomentosa, growing in the Horsholm Royal Park that were planted about ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... percentage of error which might arise in the sampling or estimating of any particular one. The shapes of these blocks, on longitudinal section, are often not regular geometrical figures. As a matter of practice, however, they can be subdivided into such figures that the total will approximate the whole with sufficient closeness for calculations of ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... led them to consider the symbolical language in question as the ideal type of philosophical language generally; to think that names in general, or (as they are fond of calling them) signs, are fitted for the purposes of thought in proportion as they can be made to approximate to the compactness, the entire unmeaningness, and the capability of being used as counters without a thought of what they represent, which are characteristic of the a and b, the x and y, of algebra. This notion has led to sanguine ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... "Curieux," despatched to England by Nelson the night before he left Antigua, had fallen in with the allied squadrons, nine hundred miles north-northeast from Antigua, on the 19th of June—just a week after she sailed. Keeping company with them long enough to ascertain their course and approximate numbers, the captain then hastened on, anchoring in Plymouth on the 7th of July. "I am sorry," wrote Nelson when he heard of this meeting, "that Captain Bettesworth did not stand back and try to find us out;" but grateful as the word ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... always beyond thy account. He that so often sur- viveth his expectation lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow; make times to come present; con- ceive that near which may be far off. Approximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them: be like a neighbour unto death, and think there is but little to come. And since there is something in us that must still live on, join ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses "verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for "marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... those numbered 27, 35, 107, 255, and many others, sometimes seems to set human ingenuity at defiance. It would of course have been possible, by disentangling dove-tailed sentences and by giving the approximate meaning where the literal was impossible, to turn all this into fairly smooth English. But in such a process all the strength and individual character of the original would inevitably have been lost. What I have endeavoured to do is to indicate the diction which a man of Wagner's peculiar turn ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... A principle totally different from the equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is thereby admitted: but no sooner is this principle admitted than (as usual) it is subverted; and it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) to approximate the inequality of riches to the level of Nature. The additional share in the third portion of representation (a portion reserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made to regard the district ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Piqueno, in the kingdom of Bengal, no notices are to be found in the best modern maps of that country, so that we can only approximate their situation by guess. Setting out from what the author calls the port of Orissa, which has already been conjectured to be Balasore, the author coasted to the river Ganges, at the distance of 54 miles. This necessarily implies ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... in Philadelphia a large painting of that particular spot, and though not remarkably well done, it enables one to form an approximate idea of the grandeur ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... some approximate account, and, speaking loudly, I ran on readily with a long string of statistics, most of them, I grieve to say, manufactured on the spur of the moment. But I knew that Carvel was not listening, and did not care what I said. Hermione was watching ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... biographical fiction. There is nothing generically new about the particular kind of demi-autobiographies that the advanced are writing just now. The last two decades have been rich in stories that need only a set of notes to reveal their approximate faithfulness to things that actually happened. But there is an emphasis upon revolt and disillusion and confusion in these latest novels that is new. They are no longer on the defensive, no longer stories of boys struggling to adapt themselves to a difficult ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity of their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have got abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by some writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an approximate estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch himself out some two or two and a half feet more than his measurable length. You have doubtless often seen a domestic cat whetting its claws on the mat, or scratching some rough substance, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... growth of animal and vegetable deposits, the vast antiquity of life, the stripping, fracturing and gradual transformation of the terrestrial surface,[3104] and, finally the grand picture in which Buffon describes in approximate manner the entire history of our globe, from the moment it formed a mass of glowing lava down to the time when our species, after so many lost or surviving species, was able to inhabit it.—Upon this science of inorganic matter we see arising at the same time the science of organic matter. Grew, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Self-reliance cannot be too early taught him, and, indeed, every one else. In the generality of instances, however, a child is put on his feet too soon, and the bones, at that tender age, being very flexible, bend, causing bowed and bandy-legs; and the knees, being weak, approximate too closely together, and thus they become knock-kneed. This advice of not putting a child early on his feet, I must strongly insist on, as many mothers are so ridiculously ambitious that their young ones should walk early—that they should walk before other children of their ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... As osseous union of the fragments is not essential to a good functional result, and as fibrous union does not necessarily entail any material interference with the usefulness of the limb, no attempt need be made to approximate the fragments, but every effort must be made to maintain the function of the quadriceps muscle and the mobility ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... hath subjected itself to the fates, the evolvers of the endless thread—to the stern necessity of progression. 'Idea' itself it cannot become, but it may in long and graduated process, become an image, an ANALOGON, an anti-type of IDEA. And this [Greek: eidolon] may approximate to a perfect likeness. 'Quod est simile, nequit esse idem'. Thus, in the lower animals, we see this process of emancipation commence with the intermediate link, or that which forms the transition from properties ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... of subsidies and subventions paid by Great Britain and all her colonies in 1911 approximate ten million dollars annually. The subsidies and mail pay of the Imperial Government amounted, in round numbers, to four million dollars, of which, in 1910, the Cunard Company received seven hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars.[BB] Besides the Admiralty subventions, retainer ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon

... however, is a matter of frequent, occurrence. It would be hard to form an approximate estimate, but, from the opinions expressed by several warrior chiefs and headmen, I believe that it occurs not infrequently. No explanation as to its cause was obtained. The fetus is usually buried without any ceremony ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... owned that they were doing well, but there was a general disinclination to state even the approximate amount of their daily winnings. The hunters found, however, that the general belief was that some of those who had claims in the centre of the valley, where of course the gold would settle the thickest, were making from ten ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... very reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was candid; and I had the civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a standard of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so much from his own; for my friend's dimensions as near as possible approximate to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... indicated the approximate number of executions of which we have record in James's reign. That number, we saw, was certainly over forty and probably approached fifty. It represented, however, not quite half the total number of cases of accusation ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... supernatural and anxious to explain it away where possible, we would keep our disbelief in the supernatural in the background, as far as we could, and would explain away our rejection of the miracles, as far as was decent; furthermore we would approximate our language to theirs wherever possible, and insist on the points on which we are all agreed, rather than on points of difference; in fact, we would meet them half way and be only too glad to do it. I maintain that in my books ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... finished the resetting quickly and tried again. This time the name read correctly but it slanted down the card and was blurred and inky. Bobby fussed for a long time to get the line straight. Experiment seemed only to approximate. One end persisted in rising too high or sinking too low. The problem was absorbing and all the time Bobby was thinking busily along, to him, original lines. At last, by means of a strip of paper and a pencil he measured ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... not go far enough for the Roman catholic Archbishop of Tuan; but Dr. Murray, the Archbishop of Dublin, was delighted with it; he termed it an honest book, while as to the charges against romanism Mr. Gladstone was misinformed. 'I merely said I was very glad to approximate to any one on the ground of truth; i.e. rejoiced when truth immediately wrought out, in whatever degree, its own legitimate result of unity. O'Connell said he claimed half of me.... Count Montalembert came to me to-day (March 23rd), and sat long, for the purpose ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... one has seen this trick, as described above, or in any way similar to the above description, who can come forward to give the approximate date, of such a performance, the place, and the names of the performer, his assistants, or of any two other persons who saw the trick done at that time ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... if Bob would care for a widow. There is more danger from Will, who thinks Mrs. Grandon a perfect paragon, and who is very anxious that Katy may appear well before her, saying nothing and doing nothing which shall in any way approximate to Silverton and the shoes which Katy told Esther she used to bind when a girl. Will need not be disturbed, for Sybil Grandon was never half as pretty as Katy, or half as much admired. Neither need Mrs. General ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... it (which is in reality an affected style—be it good or bad); and my third way of writing is to say all that comes into my head for my own pleasure, in the first words that come, retouching them afterward into (approximate) grammar. These notes for the "Art Journal" were so written; and I like them myself, of course; but ask the reader's pardon ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... from Homan and report to me, as near as he can make, an approximate estimate is the right term in the trade, I believe, of the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... theatres, the former constructed in a hall forty-six feet broad and sixty-six feet long, the latter erected on a plot of ground forty-two feet broad and one hundred and forty feet long, we are not left entirely ignorant of the shape and the approximate size of the Cockpit.[583] And from Middleton's Inner Temple Masque (1618) we learn that it was constructed of brick. Its sign, presumably, was that of a phoenix rising ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... member belonging to the community, down to the smallest pappoose, contributing in turn a hog. From our ignorance of the language, and the number of other and more pressing matters claiming our attention, we could not learn all the details of their internal economy, but it seemed to approximate that improved state of association which is sometimes heard of among us; and as theirs has existed for an unknown length of time, and can no longer be considered merely experimental, Owen on Fourier might perhaps take lessons from them with advantage." [Footnote: Incidents ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... handsome amount 13,059,570 francs, or 522,383l. sterling, being the outlay on the Central Administration and the prefectures, must be added to the 1,200,000 francs, or 48,000l. sterling, of the Presidential salary and allowances, in order to give us a basis for a fair approximate comparison of the cost to republican France of her executive President and prefects with the cost to monarchical Great Britain of her executive Sovereign, lords-lieutenant, and Viceroy of Ireland. Stated in round numbers, the result appears to be ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... enough imagination to realize types of excellence altogether differing from their own. It is this, much more than vanity, that leads them to esteem the types of excellence to which they themselves approximate as the best, and tastes and habits that are altogether incongruous with their own as futile and contemptible."] Be sure that you are saying what you are saying for the other's good, and not to give vent to your own irritability or selfishness or sense ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... may be divided into two rather large belts, known as southern and northern. In fact, pecan culture is sometimes designated as "southern" and "northern" due to differences in size of nut, thickness of shell, and time required for maturity of nuts. The approximate northern limit of the southern area is near the extreme southeastern boundary line between Missouri and Arkansas. The northern belt extends into Nebraska and Iowa and includes approximately ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... years old. A philosopher of a slightly different turn will say, 'Niagara Falls is only the lip of the basin out of which pours all the surplus water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand square miles of the earth's surface.' He will estimate with approximate accuracy that five hundred thousand tons of water fall with their full weight a distance of a hundred feet each minute—thus exerting a force equal to the lifting of the same weight, through the same space, in the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... facts to rectify his theory. A traveller is bound to tell us what he saw, not what he expected or wished to see; and it is only by comparing the different views of many independent observers that we who tarry at home can arrive at any approximate notion of absolute fact. The general inferiority of modern books of travel is due to the fact that their authors write in the fear of their special fragment of a public, and report of foreign countries as if they were drummers for Exeter Hall or the Southern Planters' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... pieces before Paula. His young master had sent it, in obedience to his deceased father's wishes, for her immediate needs; the rest, the larger part of her fortune, with a full account, would be given over to her after the Mukaukas was buried. Nilus could, however, give her an approximate idea of the sum, and it was so considerable that Paula could not believe her ears. She now saw herself secure against external anxiety, nay, in such ease that she was justified in living at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... murdered man's room this afternoon gave us several clues, not the least important of which is that we are enabled to fix the actual time of the murder with some degree of accuracy. It is always useful, in a case of murder, to be able to establish the approximate time at which it was committed. In this case, the murder was certainly committed between the hours of 11 p.m. and 11.30 p.m., and, in all probability, not much before ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... and 2150 years through thirty degrees, or one sign of the Zodiac. The knowledge of this process affording an exact chronology, we are enabled, not only to determine the origin of these symbols, but to approximate, very nearly, to the respective dates of ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... present in different lands and different ages. And just here it will be seen that a partial knowledge will not meet the demand. It might be even misleading. Buddhism, for example, has assumed an endless variety of forms—now appearing as a system of the baldest atheism, and now presenting an approximate theism. Gautama was certainly atheistic, and he virtually denied the existence of the human soul. But in the northern development of his system, theistic conceptions sprang up. A sort of trinity had appeared by the seventh century A.D., and by the tenth century a supreme and ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... as he listened, he was able to approximate to the origin of these calls. Night-hawks, cranes, curlews, and frogs might, any of them, or all, be guilty; and some kind of cricket undoubtedly produced that regular stridulation, as of a piece of ivory drawn along the teeth of a ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... made their way directly to the approximate location of the border line. They kept track of the distance by using a careful thirty inch step, such as is used in the regular army, and counting their paces as they went. A pace consists of two steps, and is measured by starting off with the right foot and ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle

... whence the Egyptians are supposed to have come). Men accustomed to raise these structures for their dead kings or conquerors would carry the usage with them in their migrations, but arriving in Egypt, and seeing the impossibility of finding earth sufficiently tenacious for a mound, they would approximate as nearly as might be to their ancient custom by raising up a round heap of stones—in short, conical pyramids. Of these there are several at Sakkara, and the materials of some are thrown together without any order or regularity. The transition from this simple form to that of the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... method now to the present instance, Mr. Cromarty, the first point to observe is that the room is twenty-six feet long, measured from the windie, which is a bit recessed or set back, as it were, to the other end of the apartment. Half of 26 is 13, and if you take the half way line and draw approximate perpendiculars to about where the table was standing and to as near as one can remember where the middle of the corp roughly was lying, you get exactly six feet ten and five-eighths ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... related by a like unbelief—those who will not believe in the existence of the good of which they have apprehended no approximate instance, and those who will not believe in the existence of similar evil. I tell the one class, there are men who would cast their very being from them rather than be such as they; and the other, that their shutting of their eyes is no potent reason for ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... "obsolete" notation [obs3] indicates that the previous word (or some word in the previous phrase) is not recognized by the word processor's spelling checker, and also is either NOT in a modern college-sized dictionary, or is noted there as being "ARCHAIC". (7) the approximate location of the bottom of each page in the original 1911 printed book is indicated by a comment of the form: . To search for a page, note that there are two spaces between the "p." and the page number. (8) This file contains only the main body of the thesaurus. Neither outline nor index ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the church, these simple, interesting, and harmless (if not laudable) practices still remain. The early customs and features of all nations approximate; and whether the following traits, which a friend has kindly obliged me with, are relics of Roman introduction, or national, I leave the antiquary ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... well-grown little boy, when being thrashed, howling at the very top of his bent. If one can conceive of a full-grown male giant twenty feet high pouring forth his whole soul and voice with similarly unrestrained fervour, he may approximate to ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... judgment, they are at least not the hackneyed prejudices of the past—if they lead to false conclusions, they at least furnish a new point of view, from which, taken with other widely differing views, the judicious reader may establish a parallax that will enable him to approximate ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... indistinctness would be a defect, and imply that the artist wanted the power to pourtray the conceptions of his fancy. Mr. West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of Milton, it was necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance of super-human strength and energy. He has therefore exerted the utmost force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure."—One might suppose from this, that the way to represent ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... spring flowers to be arranged in flower pots or in wicker baskets. In mixed groups, as a certain guide to those who do not like to trust to their own taste for blending colours, I would place lavender near pink; blue to red; white should approximate to scarlet, and yellow to purple. The small flowers particularly essential in separating the larger ones are white and yellow jasmine, nemophila cineraria, verbenas, myrtle, honeysuckle, etc., etc. The pendent flowers give great ease and elegance to a bouquet, ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey

... coasts, until, after travelling over a hemisphere, we come to the shores of Africa; and over this vast space we meet with no well-defined and distinct marine faunas. Although so few marine animals are common to the above-named three approximate faunas of Eastern and Western America and the eastern Pacific islands, yet many fishes range from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean, and many shells are common to the eastern islands of the Pacific and the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... adaptation of Nature—which may be observed in all her kingdoms—may explain the difference that exists between the wolves of the Northern parts of America and those of the South of Europe. He believes, moreover, that those of the Southern parts of the American continent approximate more nearly to the Pyrenean wolves, as he has seen in the tropical forest of Mexico some that possessed all that "gaunt" form and "sneaking" aspect ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... chemically pure distilled water, and ascertains positively that under these conditions iodine and carbonate of soda give absolutely no reaction. Finally, to complete the demonstration and to ascertain the approximate quantity of alcohol contained in natural waters, he undertakes the double fractional distillation of a certain quantity of pure water to which he has previously added a one-millionth part of alcohol. Under these circumstances the iodine and carbonate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... glad Throng moved into the Main Banquet Hall, which was a snug Apartment about the size of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, done in Gold and various shades of Pink, to approximate the Chambermaid's Dream of Paradise. The style of Ornamentation was that which ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... few days without rapids. We had been exactly a month going through an uninterrupted succession of rapids. During that month we had come only about 110 kilometres, and had descended nearly 150 metres—the figures are approximate but fairly accurate. We had lost four of the canoes with which we started, and one other, which we had built, and the life of one man; and the life of a dog which by its death had in all probability saved the life of Colonel Rondon. In a straight line northward, toward our supposed destination, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... originate with men more or less fanatical in spirit. None but they have the necessary elements of character to advance at all. But, as others become convinced of the fundamental truths which they utter, the tendency of their association is to modify and soften the tone, and make it more nearly approximate the correct sentiment. At this period, there is quite as much of liberality among anti-slavery men as is consistent with a determined maintenance of their general purpose. Though disposed to be just to all who conscientiously differ with them in opinion, they cannot overlook ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... sugars, and which could be submitted to elementary analysis. Whereas these early purified substances were thought to correspond to the formula of digallic acid (galloylgallic acid), C14H10O9, Fischer and Freudenberg [Footnote: Ber., 1912, 915 and 2709.] were able to show, with approximate certainty, that the constitution of tannin is that of ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... us is a certain subtraction sum. We have to take from life one of its strongest present elements; and see as well as we can what will then be the remainder. An exact answer we shall, of course, not expect; but we can arrive at an approximate one without ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... examine other pictures which I am persuaded really emanate from Giorgione himself, let us attempt to place in approximate chronological order the twenty-six works already accepted as genuine, for, once their sequence is established, we shall the more readily detect the lacunae in the artist's evolution, and so the more easily recognise any missing transitional ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... race. Close observers find among the aboriginal tribes resident far up on the north-west American coast peculiar habits and customs, having closely-allied types among the Chinese. The features of the Aleuts, the natives of the Aleutian Islands, are said to approximate closely to those of the Mongolians. The unvarying long black hair, variously-shaded brown skin, beardless face and shaven head are points, natural and artificial, common to the Indian and Mongolian. There ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... From the viewpoint of methodology we now have methods which are suitable as quantitive procedures for determining the effect of extracts of unknown substances on yeast growth and hence if the stimulatory substance is vitamine "B," a means of determining within a space of twenty-four hours the approximate content of stimulatory material in a given source. Since the Funk method is the simplest of these and illustrates the principles involved it ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... my companion, "we have been waiting for you to improve your telescopes so as to approximate the power of ours, after which communication between the planets would be easily established. The progress which you make is, however, so slow that we ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... is blue; and when they approximate or accompany each other, they require to be resolved by the opposition of warm colours. It is in this way that the warmth of distance and the horizon reconciles the azure of the sky with the greenness of a landscape. Its less powerful discord is yellow, which needs to be similarly resolved by ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... like a thief. I was wretched all day, wondering how I should come to supper in the evening. I wondered whether she was going to deliver me over to the jealous wrath of her husband. I should have willingly forfeited my trunk and settled in another place, but Mrs. Levinsky had an approximate knowledge of the places where I was likely to do business and there was the danger of a scene from her. Maximum Max's theory did not seem to count for much. But then he had said that one must know "how to go about it." Perhaps I ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... writing of America and its young people, and the liberty allowed them, says "the liberty, or the license, of our youth will have to be curtailed. As our society becomes complex and artificial, like older societies in Europe, our children will be forced to approximate to them in status, and parents will have to waken to a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... half-casts of fairer complexion, especially the Cuarterones and the Quinteros, there is but little to be said. Both physically and morally they approximate closely to the whites, among whom they ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... structure of man resembles closely that of the monkey race; and hence objects to the conclusion to which some of these men have arrived (by jumping over, as it were), that man is an omnivorous animal. He freely allows—I use his own words—"that man does approximate more closely to the frugivorous animals than to any others, in physical organization." But then he insists that the conclusion which ought to be drawn from this similarity "is, that he is designed to have his food in about ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... to inaugurate the proposed plan for land reform of the Board of Trade, Nicholson turned to the improvement of collection of quitrents as the most feasible means of achieving the approximate goal. Payment of rent was an acknowledged requirement, even though frequently evaded in the seventeenth century; and Nicholson proposed a stringent collection of quitrents in arrears in order to force the return ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... price' is the price which equalizes supply and demand, not as existing in the particular market, but in the larger sense which I have assigned to the terms. To this price the actual market price will, according to my view, approximate, in proportion to the intelligence ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... hardships and hazards of daily life its value is determined and its destiny shaped. And according to the measure in which we use these experiences, and transmute them by obedience to the will of God into means of good, do we grow in Christian character and approximate to the full ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... reception were plainly visible. Bronzed and healthy-looking, they stepped out on to the platform, and after a brief greeting to Mrs. Chalk and Mrs. Stobell led the way in some haste to the exit. The crowd pressed close behind, and inquiries as to the treasure and its approximate value broke clamorously upon the ears of the maddened Mr. Stobell. Friends of many years who sought for particulars were shouldered aside, and it was left to Mr. Chalk, who struggled along in the rear with his wife, to announce ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs



Words linked to "Approximate" :   lowball, border on, gauge, cipher, count, rough, close together, calculate, work out, truncate, resemble, make, reckon, guesstimate, guess, judge, near, place, underestimate, misgauge



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