Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

Approximations  

103b

There is a wide range of expressions used with numbers and quantities which

enable speakers to give approximations rather than being absolutely precise and

perhaps being heard as pedantic. Approximations are used for the same

interpersonal reasons as the vague expressions in 103a. 

Adverbs and prepositions 

Adverbs and prepositions are most commonly used to express approximation:

I’ll see you 

around six.

Û

539 Glossary for any unfamiliar terms

From utterance to discourse | 203

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There were 

roughly twenty people turned up.

I had the goldfish for 

about three years.

That laser printer can do 

round about six pages a minute.

Up to three hundred new cars had been delivered before the fault was

discovered.

The basic meaning of most of the common expressions is ‘approximately’,

although the word approximately itself is more commonly used in writing and

only normally occurs in formal speech. Prepositional phrases indicating

approximation are also more common in formal speech and in writing:

The plane will settle at its cruising altitude of 

approximately 11,000 metres.

(spoken, formal)

Losses which were 

in the region of thirty thousand pounds daily were reported

by three of the airlines.

(spoken, formal)