You can see where this is going, right? Razors started out with a single-edged blade. Then Trac 2 came along. I’ve no idea how many there are now, but it’s more than 3 I betcha.
Likewise.
Yeah, that’s what I really know it for. I’d get the usage in the OP and the usage in Spanish, but the above is what sprung to mind when I read the title.
I use it as approximately and I think that it’s very well understood to mean that although I could be wrong. I wouldn’t use it for something critical but then something critical wouldn’t use an approximate time or quantity.
I also may use it for manaña or whatever on occasion but that’s not really what’s being asked here.
How about six?
Blade Inflation! Soon enough, there’ll be Tildes all over the place.
In my general experience it tends to be the opposite. I see the tilde or double tilde more often in mathematics, such as when a simplified formula instead of a very complicated one is used for convenience, and the answer expressed as something like ~x. Whereas in general discourse I’ll more typically see things like “approximately”, “approx.”, “roughly”, “around”, or, for dates “c.” for “circa”.
I knew linux was it’s own world. It’s starting to look like an echo chamber.
I’ve only ever used the double version - to mean approximately.
(I’m a 73 year old native Englishman who did mathematics at University.)
I would not assume that everyone understands tilde to mean approximately. I would not be surprised if someone misinterpreted it to be a minus sign, which could be a catastrophic error in some situations.
Holy pinata, I had no idea it was used as anything other than an accent in Spanish.
A 3rd grader once asked me, “What’s that squiggly thing?!” LOL
My tilde
she take me money and run Venezuela
Realistically, in the context you’re asking about, “7am” (without the tilde) already means “about 7am” and “7pm” already means “about 7pm.” No one is going to ensure the pill goes into Maxo’s mouth at exactly 7:00:00.
If you’re worried about it, I’d say something like “around” or “about.” Or you could say something like “7am plus or minus 15 minutes.” That way you can be sure your intended meaning will be understood.
<pedantry> First time I’ve seen the “its”/“it’s” confusion marvelously contradicted in just two consecutive sentences! </pendantry>
Honestly kids have seen it from very early on. Middle School routinely and apparently even third grade!
In the context of
what meaning other than “around” is there possibly to misconstrue? The logic operator use of the tilde as “not”??
People are not always smart but we don’t have to assume most are complete idiots.
The “double tilde” is a squiggly equals sign, and it means “is approximately equal to.”
That’s different from what the OP is talking about: a single tilde in front of a number to mean “approximately.”
At least, that’s how I’ve always seen them used.
That’s because it’s informal usage, not because it is unknown or too high level. Wikipedia even subheads the section “common use in English” under the Usage heading.
Common use in English
The English language does not use the tilde as a diacritic, though it is used in some loanwords. The standalone form of the symbol is used more widely. Informally, it means “approximately”, “about”, or “around”, such as “~30 minutes before”.
There are certainly people (e.g., @WOOKINPANUBv.2) who aren’t familiar with it. But that’s going to be a small minority. In the U.S. at least, it is generally well understood.
Depends on which formal usage in mathematics and programming you mean. I’ve seen it used in mathematics to mean something like “approximately” (sometimes in a rigorously-defined way), and I’ve also seen it used to mean “not”, and there are probably other uses.
And of course, there’s even more variety in programming, since different languages use symbols differently, and there are eleventy billion different programming languages.
I know what a tilde means. But I don’t know what a home attendant is.