All 7 Uses of
approach
in
Macbeth
- The rest is labor, which is not used for you:
I'll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful
The hearing of my wife with your approach;
So, humbly take my leave.†p. 29.5
- Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight
With a new Gorgon.†p. 67.1
- The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:
Now spurs the lated traveller apace,
To gain the timely inn; and near approaches
The subject of our watch.†p. 97.1
- What man dare, I dare:
Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble: or be alive again,
And dare me to the desert with thy sword;
If trembling I inhabit then, protest me
The baby of a girl.†p. 107.2
- I doubt some danger does approach you nearly:
If you will take a homely man's advice,
Be not found here; hence, with your little ones.†p. 137.5
- Whither, indeed, before thy here-approach,
Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men
Already at a point, was setting forth:
Now we'll together; and the chance of goodness
Be like our warranted quarrel!†p. 147.9
- The time approaches,
That will with due decision make us know
What we shall say we have, and what we owe.†p. 175.8 *
Definitions:
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(1)
(approach as in: approached the city) to get closer to (near in space, time, quantity, or quality)
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(2)
(approach as in: use the best approach) a way of doing something; or a route that leads to a particular place
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(3)
(approach as in: approached her with the proposal) to begin communication with someone about something -- often a proposal or a delicate topic
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(4)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) More rarely (and typically only in classic literature), the phrase nearest approach to as used in "her nearest approach to an apology" or "her nearest approach to a smile" typically means that "something is as close to something else as it ever gets." "As near an approach to" can have a similar meaning.