Common Use
This symbol (in English) sometimes means "approximately", such as: "~30 minutes ago" meaning "approximately 30 minutes ago". It can mean "similar to", including "of the same order of magnitude as", such as: x ~ y" meaning that x and y are of the same order of magnitude. Another approximation symbol is ≈, meaning "approximately equal to."
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Famous quotes containing the words common use and/or common:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Whatever else may divide us, Europe is our common home; a common fate has linked us through the centuries, and it continues to link us today.”
—Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982)
“We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)