approximately
Americanadverb
adverb
Etymology
Origin of approximately
First recorded in 1845–50; approximate ( def. ) + -ly ( def. )
Explanation
Approximately is close to a particular time, measurement, or number — but it's not exact. If you plan to meet a friend at approximately 2:00, it will be okay if you are a bit early or late. Approximately has its roots in the Latin word proximus, meaning "nearly." So, approximately means "about" or "close to." If you tell someone there will be approximately seventy people at a dinner, it means you expect seventy people, though the actual number could be a little more or a little less than seventy.
Vocabulary lists containing approximately
Walk Two Moons
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Ocean Storm Alert!
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STAAR Grade 7 Mathematics: The Language of the Test
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
About a tenth of the approximately 2,400 patients who come to Catalina Island Health’s five-bed emergency room need to go to the mainland for a higher level of care.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2026
Ottawa says the project will reduce Canada's overall dependency on the US to approximately 65-70% as it opens up the market to the Asia-Pacific region, including key markets such as South Korea, China, and Japan.
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026
The deal is valued at approximately $8.2 billion and will make Li, a Stanford computer science professor, chief scientist at AMD.
From Barron's ● Sep. 28, 2026
The researchers identified a large thermal gradient, with temperatures reaching approximately 350 degrees Celsius beside the magma intrusion and falling to about 72 degrees Celsius at an ancient seafloor asphalt spill roughly 300 meters higher.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026
On the evening of June 2, at approximately 5:30 P.M.,
From "How It Went Down" by Kekla Magoon
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
