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Approximation   /əprˌɑksəmˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Approximation

noun
1.
An approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth.  Synonyms: estimate, estimation, idea.  "A rough idea how long it would take"
2.
The quality of coming near to identity (especially close in quantity).
3.
An imprecise or incomplete account.
4.
The act of bringing near or bringing together especially the cut edges of tissue.  Synonym: bringing close together.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Approximation" Quotes from Famous Books



... impossible to estimate the amount spent for each separate item in the sundries group, but in Table 4 is given an approximation of expenses in this division of the budget. Since expenditures for sundries vary widely as between different families, the total allowed may be spent in a large variety of ways. It is believed, however, that $5.10 ...
— The Cost of Living Among Wage-Earners - Fall River, Massachusetts, October, 1919, Research Report - Number 22, November, 1919 • National Industrial Conference Board

... is styled, of Celestina, was obviously never intended for representation, to which, not merely the grossness of some of the details, but the length and arrangement of the piece, are unsuitable. But, notwithstanding this, and its approximation to the character of a romance, it must be admitted to contain within itself the essential elements of dramatic composition; and, as such, is extolled by the Spanish critics, as opening the theatrical career of Europe. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... debates around him, and that his religious prepossessions were then, as afterwards, in favour of the conforming puritanism in the Church, as opposed to the extreme and thorough-going puritanism of Cartwright. Of the conforming puritans, who would have been glad of a greater approximation to the Swiss model, but who, whatever their private wishes or dislikes, thought it best, for good reasons or bad, to submit to the strong determination of the government against it, and to accept what the government approved ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... negative denial of God to the construction of a new philosophy in which Truth is his guide, Truth being the nearest approximation to reality obtainable with our present knowledge. Belief in the world as it is now, and as it is going to ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... and more to that of the Irish, competing with them in all the markets: that whatsoever labour, to which mere strength with little skill will suffice, is to be done, will be done not at the English price, but at an approximation to the Irish price; at a price superior as yet to the Irish, that is, superior to scarcity of potatoes for thirty weeks yearly; superior, yet hourly, with the arrival of every new steamboat, sinking nearer ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... consisting of the entire thickness of the true skin were specially advocated by Wolff and are often associated with his name. They should be cut oval or spindle-shaped, to facilitate the approximation of the edges of the resulting wound. The graft should be cut to the exact size of the surface it is to cover; Gillies believes that tension of the graft favours its taking. These grafts may be placed either on a fresh raw surface ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art observes an order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest delight results; but the diversity is not sufficiently marked, as that its gradations should be sensible, except ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... consisting of a number of leading commodities in fixed proportions, such as is used in calculating index numbers expressing the general scale of prices. Such a standard averages the fluctuations of particular goods and would give a fair approximation in practice to the ideals of equal sacrifice and equal enjoyment (on the average tho not in individual cases). While some natural materials are growing more scarce and call for more sacrifice, other products are by industrial progress becoming more plentiful. This kind of standard ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... Besides these there were executive orders passed by the Governor-General in Council for the 'non-regulation' provinces (the North-western Provinces, the Punjab, Oudh, the Central Provinces, and Burmah). These had more or less introduced the same laws into the regions successively annexed, or such an approximation to those laws as was practicable, and dictated according to an accustomed formula by 'justice, equity, and good conscience.' Certain doubts existed as to the precise legal character of these orders. Their validity had been confirmed by the Act ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... calculations in my reckonings. I think I have already stated that I kept my longitude, at least, mostly by intuition. A rotator log always towed astern, but so much has to be allowed for currents and for drift, which the log never shows, that it is only an approximation, after all, to be corrected by one's own judgment from data of a thousand voyages; and even then the master of the ship, if he be wise, cries out for ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... faculties of each perceiver thereof.' But as each man's faculties, he said, were different from his neighbour's, and all more or less imperfect, it was impossible that the absolute objective truth of anything could be seen by any mortal, but only some partial approximation, and, as it were, sketch of it, according as the object was represented with more or less refraction on the mirror of his subjectivity. And therefore, as the true inquirer deals only with the possible, and lets the impossible go, it was the business of the wise man, ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... mammalia—the Monotremata—in common with birds, have oviducts which towards their lower extremities are dilated into cavities severally performing in an imperfect way the function of a uterus. "In the Marsupialia, there is a closer approximation of the two lateral sets of organs on the median line; for the oviducts converge towards one another and meet (without coalescing) on the median line; so that their uterine dilatations are in contact with each other, forming a true 'double uterus.' ... As we ascend the series of 'placental' mammals, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... evidence deserving a better name, in favour of assertions of innocence made on the scaffold and at the stake, created, as they still preserve, a strong willingness to disbelieve the accusations which come so suspiciously before us.[61] An approximation to the truth may be obtained if, rejecting as improbable the accusations of devil-worship and its concomitant rites which, invented to amuse the vulgar, characterise the proceedings, we admit the probability ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... the interests of the other party to the transaction. But to yield to such temptation would merely be to abuse a principle which on the whole is sanctioned by the requirements of economic efficiency. This principle is that the nearest approximation to effective justice in business transactions is reached when on each side the parties devote themselves to their respective interests and points of view. If A has a house for sale and B is a prospective buyer, the essence of the possible transaction between the two is ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman

... and Scotland were not united at the beginning of that mighty struggle. When, in the course of the contest, they were conjoined, it was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an unproductive, union. For the whole duration of the war, and long after, the names and other outward and visible signs of approximation rather augmented than diminished our insular feuds. They were rather the causes of new discontents and new troubles than promoters of cordiality and affection. The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two countries, but, from the party heats in both, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... we attempt what has been so often attempted and never fully achieved? Such attempts are profitable. What though we reach not the very heart of the mystery, we may get near enough to hearken to the throb of its power, and our minds will be nerved by the approximation. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... The nearest approximation which can be generally made to exact evidence in this case, is the word of some individual who has had the story, it may be, from the person to whom it has happened, but most likely from his family, or some friend of the family. Far more commonly ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... about this part of the work; be content to get some approximation to the shape, leaving the finishing to be done with the tools. Build up the stem in like manner, or you might roll out a thin piece of clay and stick this on to the slab. In sticking clay on to clay, it is always advisable to wet both the clay and the slab to ensure thorough adhesion, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... common to every individual member of the class without exception. All that we can do in such cases is to lay down a type of the class in its perfect form, and judge of individual instances by the degree of their approximation to it. Again, real kinds being known to us primarily in extension, the intension which we attach to the names is hable to be affected by the advance of knowledge. In dealing therefore with such terms we must be content with provisional definitions, ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... some of the greatest difficulties raised by the theory. They have enabled us greatly to shorten the time biological evolution seems to demand. They also render us less exacting toward paleontology. So that, all things considered, the transformist hypothesis looks more and more like a close approximation to the truth. It is not rigorously demonstrable; but, failing the certainty of theoretical or experimental demonstration, there is a probability which is continually growing, due to evidence which, while coming short ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... whither it goeth.' And even those who themselves possess it know not, nor shall know, through the ages of a progressive approximation to the ever-approached and never-attained perfection. 'This spake He of the Holy Ghost, which they that believe on Him should receive.' Trust Christ, and 'the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus shall make you free from the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... could discover that the person with whom Hayraddin was now conversing was one of his own tribe, and at the same time he perceived, to his great disappointment, that no approximation could enable him to comprehend their language, which was totally unknown to him. They laughed much, and as Hayraddin made a sign of skipping about, and ended by rubbing his shoulder with his hand, Durward ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... develop a Satog type that would be the exact physical counterpart of a human being and could live undetected on our worlds for the several years required to prepare for the attack. They were amazingly successful. Each group of cells in the long series which began moving towards an approximation of the human pattern was developed only far enough to initiate the greatest favorable shift possible at that point in its genetic structure. Cell generations may have followed each other within hours in this ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz

... would willingly, for she herself needs help: at present her knowledge is limited, not so much of the chemistry of colours as of the properties of pigments. She seeks to mix her pound of theory with an ounce of practice, and craves a warmer welcome to the studio. For any approximation to the truth to be arrived at, facts must be noted with the conditions under which they occur, not by one sister alone nor by the other alone, but by both. In future, Art and Science should go hand in hand, mutually dependent on each ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... could talk together about Walter, though but the adoptive brother of the one, and the real son of the other. Richard had inherited, apparently, his wife's love to Molly, and added to it his own; but their union had its root in the perfect truthfulness of the two. Real approximation, real union must ever be in proportion to mutual truthfulness. It was quite after the usual fashion, therefore, between them, when Molly began, to tell her father about the conversation ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... At the Goose Pool and Early Nook, it was common for these coaches to stop; and there, as Jonathan would say, passengers and coachmen 'liquored.' One coach, introduced by an innkeeper, was a compound of two mourning coaches, an approximation to the real railway coach, which still adheres, with multiplying exceptions, to the stage coach type. One Dixon, who drove the 'Experiment' between Darlington and Shildon, is the inventor of carriage lighting on the rail. On a dark winter night, having compassion on his passengers, he would buy ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... themselves they leave on us, ill-known as their characters and actions are, a clear impression of approximation to the traditional type of the Greek of the Roman age and since. As a dynasty they seem to have been quickly spoilt by power, to have been ambitious but easily contented with the show and surface of success, to have been incapable and contemptuous ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... an embassy. He was arrayed with great care, in a style which I thought at first glance was indicative of the clerical calling, but which I soon discovered was intended to be merely symbolical of approximation to the dignity which was supposed to pertain to that profession. He wore a very long and baggy coat which had once been black, but was now tanned by exposure to a reddish brown, a vest which looked as if it had been velvet before the years had ...
— P'laski's Tunament - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... higher Mammalia stands so apparently separate and isolated from the rest as that of the Cetacea; though a careful consideration of the structure of the pinnipede Carnivora, or Seals, shows, in them, many an approximation towards the still more completely marine mammals. The extinct Zeuglodon, however, presents us with an intercalary form between the type of the Seals and that of the Whales. The skull of this great Eocene sea-monster, in fact, shows by ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... against the Emperor in the Memoirs to make them comfortable reading for his opponents, though very many of the old calumnies were disposed of in them. They contained indeed the nearest approximation to the truth which had yet appeared. Metternich, who must have been a good judge, as no man was better acquainted with what he himself calls the "age of Napoleon," says of the Memoirs: "If you want something to read, both interesting and amusing, get the Memoires de Bourrienne. These are the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... time the light had always been produced by approximation of carbon rods with their axes in the same plane; but the Jablochkoff candle consisted of like rods arranged parallel to each other and about one-eighth of an inch apart, the intervening space being filled with plaster of Paris, and the interval at the top bridged by a conducting medium. The object ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... may pass progressively, or at least with very few interruptions, from beings of more simple to those of more compound structure; and in proportion as the complexity of their organization increases, the number and dignity of their faculties increase also. Among plants a similar approximation to a graduated scale of being is apparent. Secondly, it appears, from geological observations, that plants and animals of more simple organization existed on the globe before the appearance of those of more compound structure, and the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... of the future will be distinguished by their mastery of the realm of mind, and the closer approximation of the human to the Divine, not only in intelligence, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... to a dining-room where—in English fashion, or something like English fashion, or anyway a close approximation to the fictional pictures of English fashion—kidneys and sausages and omelets waited in dishes on the side-board. Mr. Gilson poured coffee, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... Society commonly known as the Ku-Klux-Klan, has no such name among its members. That is an approximation in letters and sound to the challenging signal of the Order. For instance, when a Brother approaches the spot where a band is assembled, the sentinels, always concealed, challenge him by bringing their rifles to a full cock. That operation, as every one knows, produces two sounds or ...
— The Oaths, Signs, Ceremonies and Objects of the Ku-Klux-Klan. - A Full Expose. By A Late Member • Anonymous

... view of Church and State became, indeed, a kind of stepchild to it in the stagnant days of the later Georges; but Wesleyanism, on the one hand, and the Oxford movement on the other, pointed the inevitable moral of even an approximation to the Hobbesian view. And anyone who surveys the history of Church and State in America will be tempted to assert that in the last hundred years the separateness for which Locke contended is not without ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... in form and colour without interfering with their special functions. Again, the number of species of insects is so great, and there is such diversity of form and proportion in every group, that the chances of an accidental approximation in size, form, and colour, of one insect to another of a different group, are very considerable; and it is these chance approximations that furnish the basis of mimicry, to be continually advanced and perfected ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... until its massive trunk is able to bid defiance to the storm. Conversing on this subject with one of her children at a late period in life, when her judgment was matured, and her views of divine truth rendered more clear by her approximation to a better world, she said, "I lost my peace because I grieved the Lord by a trifling disposition, but the Lord did not leave me;" then, employing the language of the lamented David Stoner, she added, "I have been converted a hundred ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... (this organ belongs, you know, to the organic system) has a regular mode of action; but I know a great many men whose BRAINS, and all their voluntary existence flowing from their brains, have a systole and diastole as regular as that of the heart itself. Habit is the approximation of the animal system to the organic. It is a confession of failure in the highest function of being, which involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view of all existing circumstances. But habit, you see, is an action in present circumstances from past motives. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... was ten or twelve days before the storm had sufficiently abated to leave the vessel manageable in the hands of the captain and crew, and then the captain's reckoning was gone. He could get his latitude correctly, but not his longitude, except by a remote approximation. His first observation, when the sky gave an opportunity, showed us to be in latitude forty-five degrees south. This he explained to me, and also the impracticability of now making the Cape, pointing out upon the map the Swan River Settlement in Australia ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... concluded that the earth revolved on its axis. He made careful experiments with billiard balls, discovering that the {614} momentum of the impact always was preserved entire in the motion of the balls struck. He measured forces by the weight and speed of the bodies and arrived at an approximation of the ideas of mechanical "work" and energy of position. He thought of energy as a spiritual force transferred from one body to another by touch. This remarkable man further invented a hygrometer, explained ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... business, and showing neither by look nor tone that he had sympathy with the trouble she and her parents were in, by his very reticence revealed it. His manner was the colder that he was studiously avoiding the least approximation to remark on the conduct or character of the youth—an abstinence which, however, had a chilling and hopeless effect upon the ardent mind of the sister. At last, when she had given him her father's cheque, with ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... gradual, complex and perfected organization; the organ created through habits, necessity and surrounding medium; heredity transmitting acquired modifications,[3105] all denoting in advance, in a state of conjecture and approximation, the cellular theory of later physiologists[3106] and the conclusions of Darwin. In the picture which the human mind draws of nature, the general outline is marked by the science of the eighteenth century, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Light is obstructed by a Lens?—Can any of your scientific correspondents furnish me with an approximation to the quantity of light which is transmitted through an ordinary double achromatic lens, say of Ross, Voightlander, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various

... exemplification. A simile may be compared to lines converging at a point, and is more excellent as the lines approach from greater distance; an exemplification may be considered as two parallel lines, which run on together without approximation, never far separated, and never joined. Marlborough is so like the angel in the poem, that the action of both is almost the same, and performed by both in the same manner. Marlborough "teaches the battle to rage;" the angel "directs the storm:" Marlborough ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... much its flights beyond common material ideas? I trow rather, we may trace the character of the coming age in an increasing estimation of health, knowledge, mental cultivation, intellectual life, and the flow of the social affections, as the prime of earthly felicities—in an approximation towards rationally estimating money (with the ability to command it) as the means of meeting one's capacities of enjoyment—to be no longer worshipped as itself ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... fair trials; in each case, the sliding surfaces were totally immersed in muddy salt water, and although the apparatus used for drawing the slide along was not very delicately fitted up, the power required may be considered as a sufficient approximation for practical purposes. ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... with the exception of high cheek-bones, is good; the contour of the forehead ennobles it; the eyes are large and well-formed, and the upper features are frequently handsome and expressive. The jaw, however, is almost invariably prognathous and African; the broad, turned- out lips betray approximation to the Negro; and the chin projects to the detriment of the facial angle. The beard is represented by a few tufts; it is rare to see anything equal to even the Arab development: the long and ample eyebrows admired by the people ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... who created under these ideal conditions of comradeship.] But multiple friendships did not flourish among poets of the last century,—at least they were overhung by no glamor of romance that lured the poet to immortalize them in verse. The closest approximation to such a thing is in the redundant complimentary verse, with which the New England poets showered each other to such an extent as to arouse Lowell's protest. [Footnote: See A Fable for Critics.] Even they, however, did not represent themselves as living in Bohemian ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... creature ate and wove, having voracity always before him and Fine Art behind him. Much of the solider part of the State is made of the materials which enter into glass-manufacture: a mighty enchanter might fuse the greater portion of it into one gigantic goblet. A slight approximation to this work of magic is already being carried on. The tourist who has crossed the lagoons of Venice to see the fitful lights flash up from the glass-furnaces of Murano, will find more than one locality here where leaping lights, crowning low banks of sand, are preparing the crystal for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... Karara had chanted in the Foanna temple came to Ross—not in her Polynesian tongue but in the English she had repeated. And softening his voice to his best approximation of the Foanna ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... tendon of one extremity of the muscle is attached to the shoulder-bone, which acts as a fixed point; the tendon of the other extremity is attached to one of the bones of the fore-arm. When the swell of the muscle contracts, or shortens, its two extremities approach nearer each other, and by the approximation of the terminal extremities of the muscle, the joint at the elbow bends. On this principle, all the joints of the system are moved. This is illustrated by ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... near Cowes we are delighted with a variety of striking objects: The chaste and characteristic seat of Norris, the residence of Lord Henry Seymour, massive in its construction, and remarkable for the simplicity of its style and close approximation to the ancient castle. On the brow of the hill the picturesque towers of East Cowes Castle rise from a surrounding grove, and present a very beautiful appearance, which is materially increased upon nearer inspection ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... you don't give that as an exact statement but merely as a guess?-It is merely an approximation, as nearly as I can guess it to be and I have ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... of William the Norman. The former were now free tenants, who paid rent for their land to the lord of the manor, and were not bound to work for him, while the latter worked for wages like our modern agricultural labourer. There was thus in the twelfth century a gradual approximation to modern conditions on many estates; the home farm was worked by hired labourers who received wages; while the villeins had bought themselves off from the obligation of doing customary work by ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... pretension to beauty, save in one prominent particular—her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... the savages of Earth can supply," said Soames. "I'll settle for an approximation. And in practice, as a castaway in a savage environment, I'll wind up with a civilization which isn't that of the savages, and isn't of my own race, but in some ways is better than either because it's tailored to fit the materials at hand ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... call the philosophy of language, were to supersede, altogether, the province of philology as it applies to the present, progressive and refined state of English literature, the great object contemplated by the learned, in all ages, namely, the approximation of language, in common with every thing else, to that point of perfection at which it is the object of correct philology ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... of the Magdalen in Santa Trinita at Florence shows Desiderio's approximation to the style of his master. She is a careworn and ascetic saint, with the pathetic traces of great beauty in her ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... he said, "to calculate exactly; perhaps even impossible, since during these three stormy days I have been unable to keep any account of the rate or direction of the raft; but still we may get an approximation." ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... approaching friend. Nor must we forget that this accomplished deliverance is but partial whilst upon earth. 'The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.' But there may be indefinite approximation to complete deliverance. The metaphors in Scripture under which Christian progress is described, whether drawn from a conflict or a race, or from a building, or from the growth of a tree, all suggest the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... of a possible scheme of honour and privilege, and of an approximation towards the socialization of property will, at any rate, show that in this matter, as in the matter of political control, the alternative of the British system or the American system does not exhaust ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... in all ages men whose discoveries or inventions in the world of matter, or of mind, have opened new avenues to the dominion of man over the material creation; have increased his means or his faculties of enjoyment; have raised him in nearer approximation to that higher and happier condition, the object of his hopes and aspirations in his ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser

... attributed to Confucius. But much of the Li Chi is from later hands. Of the Yi, the Shu, and the Shih, it is only in the first that we find additions attributed to the philosopher himself, in the shape of appendixes. The Ch'un Ch'iu is the only one of the five Ching which can, with an approximation to correctness, be described as of his own 'making.' 1 五經. 2 四書. 3 易經. 4 書經. 5 詩經. 6 禮記. 7 春秋. 'The Four Books' is an abbreviation for 'The Books of the Four Philosophers [1].' The first is the Lun Yu [2], or 'Digested Conversations,' being occupied chiefly with the sayings of Confucius. ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge

... the maintenance of a high standard for theological education. These objects are likely to suffer at any rate. But it is even a worse result which we may count on from the changes, that a practical approximation is thus already made to what is technically known as Voluntaryism. The "United Secession," that is the old collective body of Scottish Dissenters, who, having no regular provision, are carried into this voluntary system, already ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... the learned Selden's solution of the origin of the term "gentleman" seems to include in it something not altogether complimentary to religion. This is his only objection to it. He speaks French; and his accent is, he flatters himself, an approximation to the veritable Parisian. Modern novels he does not read, but has read "Waverley" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... Relation. — N. relation, bearing, reference, connection, concern,. cognation ; correlation &c. 12; analogy; similarity &c. 17; affinity, homology, alliance, homogeneity, association; approximation &c. (nearness) 197; filiation &c. (consanguinity) 11[obs3]; interest; relevancy &c. 23; dependency, relationship, relative position. comparison &c. 464; ratio, proportion. link, tie, bond of union. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... conditions. Think what would have happened had we actually remained stolidly faithful to every intention of the Fathers. Think what would happen if every statute were enforced. By the sheer force of circumstances we have twisted constitutions and laws to some approximation of our needs. A changing country has managed to live in spite of a static government machine. Perhaps Bernard Shaw was right when he said that "the famous Constitution survives only because whenever any corner of it gets into the way of the accumulating dollar it is pettishly knocked off ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... hardly been possible. "When we attempt to measure the gap between man and the lower animals in terms of the form of movement, the wonder is no less great than when we use the term of mentality."[3] The degree of approximation to human intelligence in anthropoid animals follows very closely the degree of approximation to ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... from the tidal pull of its victim. But a close approach of that kind would be expected to result in the formation of a binary system, with orbits of great eccentricity, perhaps, and after the lapse of a certain time the outburst should be renewed by another approximation of the two bodies. A temporary star of that kind would rather be ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... impossible," says Humboldt, "to form an exact enumeration of the cattle in the Pampas, or even to give an approximation to it, so immensely have they augmented during the three centuries which have elapsed since they were first introduced; but some idea of their number may be formed from the following facts in regard to such portions of these vast herds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... you steadily keep in view that this is the FIRST step. Lord John Russell's proposal was an approximation to a right principle, which, if it had been properly supported, might have given the fairest opening for greater reforms. If the Conservatives had voted for a really Conservative measure like this it would have been carried, but as it was brought forward by a political ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... out of the principles of constitutional government is a departure from the American model, not an approximation to it, and, therefore, a departure from republicanism in ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... sweeping green bowl of the sea. "Not far off," he said abstractedly. "Two thousand miles radius—and the earth itself not a solid ball, but a big globular shell two thousand miles thick. I could rig up a level, I suppose; work out an approximation of ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... as in the words cake, ale. If the retracted tongue by approximation to the middle part of the palate, as in forming the letters R, Ga, NG, Sh, J French, L, leaves an aperture just so large as to prevent sibilancy, and sonorous air from the larynx be modulated in passing through it; the letter A is produced, as pronounced in the words ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... and methods of thinking, but his point of view in general was distinctly Jewish. He gathered together all that was best in the earlier teachings of his race. In many ways he represents an advance beyond all that had gone before and a close approximation to the spirit and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The God of his faith was omnipotent, majestic, omniscient, just, and merciful. He was the God of all mankind, although it was through Israel that he especially revealed himself. Ben Sira did not, like ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... circumstances how can we express the position of the native Church with any approximation to truth? We can only suggest that these arbitrary standards should be accepted, and ask that they should be defined in every case. We should ask the missionaries, or the societies, to estimate the amount required to supply that minimum upon which they insist. If we ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen

... before alluded to. The fact that so many and such varied changes can thus readily be explained is not only a matter of convenience, but may be taken as evidence that the standard of reference is not wholly arbitrary and artificial, but that it is a close approximation to the truth. ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... a picture of a bit of coast with a fishing-boat in the distance, and asks me how far off that boat is, I am utterly stumped because I do not know how the artist was able to judge the distance. But if I understand the principle, I give my friend a very fair approximation of the distance of the boat. I work it out like this. I say:—the immediate foreground of the picture shows an amount of detail which could not be seen more than twenty yards away, and the average size of such details in ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... whatever they may. If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin has erred, either in fact or in reasoning, his fellow-workers will soon find out the weak points in his doctrines, and their extinction by some nearer approximation to the truth will exemplify his own ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... great use in every department of literature; and especially in works of reference. With them, indeed, correctness is everything; perfect accuracy is not to be attained, and the nearest possible approximation to it can be made only by many little careful steps, backwards as well ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various

... practical approximation, not as an exact metaphysical law, the materialistic conception of history has a very large measure of truth. Take, as an instance of its truth, the influence of industrialism upon ideas. It is industrialism, ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... Europe is of the greatest mutual benefit, for any democratic movement within the borders of either Power is highly inconvenient to the other, so that it is to the advantage of both to stimulate each other in the task of repression.[4] It is this aspect of the approximation which arouses Goldscheid's alarm. It is mainly on this ground that he advocates a counter-balancing approximation between Germany and England which would lay Germany open to the West and serve to develop her latent democratic tendencies. He admits ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... of place in the representation of a Greek tragedy. The classical drama is an imaginative, poetic art, which requires the grand style for its interpretation, and produces its effects by the most ideal means. It is in the operas of Wagner, not in popular melodrama, that any approximation to the Greek method can be found. Better to wear mask and buskin than to mar by any modernity of expression the calm majesty ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... with apparent benefit. Lower than 5 or 6 inches in any soil, clover seed will not germinate till brought nearer the surface. On all soils that lift with the wind, the seed should, as a rule, be buried deeply. Ordinarily, from half an inch to an inch, or an approximation to these distances, is considered a proper depth to ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... of past time must be regarded as tentative in the present state of our knowledge and much collateral evidence will be required to confirm them; yet the results appear to me already to afford a rough approximation to the truth. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... periods, bore the same proportion to the actual population as in 1801. The numerical results are embodied in a table which appears in the Census Enumeration Abstract for 1841 (Preface, pp. 36, 37.), and it is stated that there is reason for supposing the estimate arrived at to be an approximation to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various

... is in the structure of the pelvis and of the hind limb that some of these ancient reptiles present the most remarkable approximation to birds, and clearly indicate the way by which the most specialised and characteristic features of the bird may have been evolved from the corresponding parts in ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... intercourse with society, no consolation from books; my mind locked up, every source dried of intellectual delight, and no enjoyment in my power but from sleep and from food. Weary of an existence which thus levelled me with a brute, I grew ashamed of the approximation, and listening to the remonstrance of my understanding, I gave up the precipitate plan, to pursue one more consonant to reason. I came to town, hired a room, and sent for pen, ink and paper: what I have written are trifles, but the Bookseller has not rejected them. I was settled, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... time, and the probable effect of any wage change upon that supply. The differentials which would be established from a consideration of such material could not claim to be more than a practical approximation to the differentials which would carry out ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... watercourses with a rainbow splendor of foliage, unsurpassed by the brightest groupings of the tropical flora. It must be admitted, however, that both the northern and the southern declivities of the Alps exhibit a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious coloring of autumnal vegetation than most American travellers in Europe are willing to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs, which often carpet the forest glades of these mountains, are dyed with a ruddy and orange glow, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... state of the harbour, and the tide having now ebbed a little way, the boat could not get close either to quay or shore. Six of the crew were on board, seated on the thwarts with their oars shipped, for Peter had insisted on a certain approximation to man of war manners and discipline for the evening, or at least until they got to the fishing ground. The shore itself formed one side of the harbour, and sloped down into it, and on the sand stood Malcolm with a young woman, whom Clementina recognised at once as the girl she had ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... spring-time, when his emotions blossomed with the blossoming year, he met the girl after a long interval, and saw her with changed eyes. She had something more than prettiness; her looks undeniably improved. It seemed, too, that she bore herself more gracefully, and even talked with, at times, an approximation to the speech of a lady. These admissions signified much in a man of Tarrant's social prejudice—so strong that it exercised an appreciable effect upon his every-day morals. He began to muse about ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... thought occurred to him, he shrank from it with a kind of inner terror. It was heresy. The Federation represented the closest approximation of perfection mortal man would ever know: a brotherhood of countless species, a union of a thousand planets, created by the ingenuity and the energy of man. The Pax Humana; how could it be a threat ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox

... into the more spacious fields of science; so that by the time they reached home, Briney had probably given the father a learned dissertation upon the elevation of the clouds above the earth, and told him within how many thousand miles they approached it, at their nearest point of approximation. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... 2.5, enticed perhaps by the mysterious charms of danger. Such a case I heard of, a man of unquestioned ability, who it was rumored boasted that he would get just above 2.5, and as near as he could. He was read dispassionately, and in the event came out 2.47. As an effort at approximation, this may be considered a success; but for passing it was inadequate, and his general character did not bias the final appeal in his favor. He was not dropped, indeed, but had to undergo a second examination three ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... census of 1881, the papers were somewhat differently arranged, and we are enabled to get a nearer approximation, as well as a better notion of the increase that has taken place in the number ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... approximation of selling price on the new Diesel was divulged, it was intimated that the engine will retail at a price competitive with or slightly under the price of present gasoline consuming air-cooled engines of that horsepower range. Captain Woolson will have complete charge of ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer

... evening we had a general conversation, opened by me, upon Education, in its largest sense, and on what we can do for ourselves and others. I took my usual ground:—The aim is perfection; patience the road. Our lives should be considered as a tendency, an approximation only.... Mr. R. spoke admirably on the nature of loyalty. The people showed a good deal of the sans-culotte tendency in their manners, throwing themselves on the floor, yawning, and going out when they had heard enough. Yet as the majority differ with me, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... letter [of Mr. Wright] refers entitles it to much consideration. As yet I have had no leisure nor means to form even an approximation towards any opinion as to the proposal Mr. W. mentions, far less to commit my friend. In a word, I am perfectly in the dark as to everything else, except that I am sure it will give Mrs. Lockhart ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... to the naval service. He condemned the use of the navy by the late President, and wished to sell all the public armed vessels. Finding, however, that the maritime tastes of the nation were too strong for him, he hit upon the plan of a land navy as the nearest approximation to no navy at all. Gunboats were to be hauled out of the water, and kept in drydocks under sheds, in perfect preservation. A fleet of this kind only needed a corps of horse marines to complete its efficiency. The Federalists laughed at these 'mummy frigates,' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... of a vulgar mind to dwell upon the trifles, and lose the substantial—to scan the dress, and neglect the wearer, so we opine the capabilities of D. Maclise, R.A., are brought into requisition to accommodate such beholders. He has, moreover, carefully avoided any approximation to the vulgarity of flesh and blood, in his representations of humanity; and has, therefore, ingeniously sought the delicacy of Dresden china for his models. To conclude our notice, we beg to suggest the addition of a torch and a rosin-box, which, with the assistance of Mr. Yates, or the Wizard of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various

... was hailed then as a masterly achievement of an arduous task, the difficulties of which are only the less appreciated because of the very excellence of the performance. It contrasts most strikingly with its clumsy predecessor in its approximation to Sterne's deftness of touch, his delicate turns of phrase, his seemingly obvious and facile, but really delicate and accurate choice of expression. Zckert was heavy, commonplace, uncompromisingly literal and bristling with inaccuracies. Bode's ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... is well known. The simplest physical peculiarity is mostly reproduced. I know a case of a man whose wife has the lobe of one of her ears a little flattened. An ordinary observer might scarcely notice it, and yet every one of her children has an approximation to the same peculiarity to some extent. If you look at the other extreme, too, the gravest diseases, such as gout, scrofula, and consumption, may be handed down with just the same certainty and persistence as we noticed in the perpetuation of the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. But this, there is excellent reason to believe, is an absurdly low approximation. Nearly a century and a half ago William and Frederick Rhinelander kept a bakeshop on William street, New York City, and during the Revolution operated a sugar factory. They also built ships and did ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... about the Miocene period (using Mr. Lyell's expression); I judge from what I have seen of the present shells of Patagonia. This bed contains an ENORMOUS field of lava. This is of some interest, as being a rude approximation to the age of the volcanic part of the great range of the Andes. Long before this it existed as a slate and porphyritic line of hills. I have collected a tolerable quantity of information respecting the period and forms of elevations of these plains. I think these will be interesting to Mr. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... postulatum[Lat], theory; thesis, theorem; data; proposition, position; proposal &c. (plan) 626; presumption &c. (belief) 484; divination. conjecture; guess, guesswork, speculation; rough guess, shot, shot in the dark [coll.]; conjecturality[obs3]; surmise, suspicion, sneaking suspicion; estimate, approximation (nearness) 197. inkling, suggestion, hint, intimation, notion, impression; bare supposition, vague supposition, loose supposition, loose suggestion. association of ideas, (analogy) 514a; metonym[Gram], metonymy[Gram], simile (metaphor) 521. conceit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... early comedies, divided, after the classical fashion, into acts and scenes, show close approximation to the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... prominence may be given to the figure: this object will be aided considerably by working in the lighter shades in silk: any representation of water or of painted glass, should be worked in the same material. The intention of the fair worker should be to give to her performance as near an approximation ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... a keen emulator of Thucydides, and by way of close approximation to his model starts with his own name—most graceful of beginnings, redolent of Attic thyme! Look at it: 'Crepereius Calpurnianus of Pompeiopolis wrote the history of the war between Parthia and Rome, how they warred one upon the other, beginning with the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... is the life of the herd, and to be successful in it the boy must mingle with the herd, not break from it or shun it. Good form—if we came to analyse the conception that underlies it—consists only in a close approximation to the standard pattern; bad form, in any deviation from it. It is this similarity of type and community of ideals which makes it so easy for most public-school boys to get on well with one another. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron



Words linked to "Approximation" :   reckoning, similarity, connection, overestimate, underrating, computation, underreckoning, underestimation, shot, guessing, connexion, idea, estimation, version, guesstimate, calculation, overestimation, joining, credit, estimate, guess, underestimate, figuring, dead reckoning, bringing close together, credit rating, scalage, guesswork, guestimate, overrating, overreckoning



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