All 14 Uses of

approach
in
Howards End

It was always best to approach him formally.†
Part 26 *

approach = begin communication with someone about something

They were warned quietly—really quietly, for as the day approached she refused to go through another Oniton.
Part 31 *

approached = got near

She approached just as Helen's letter had described her, trailing noiselessly over the lawn, and there was actually a wisp of hay in her hands.†
Part 3

He had been talking of his approaching exile in Nigeria, and he should have continued to talk of it, and allowed their guest to recover.†
Part 4

They are unthinkable and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.†
Part 6

They approached to the newly-dug shaft and looked their last at the coffin, now almost hidden beneath the spadefuls of clay.†
Part 11

He tried to tell his mother down below all that he had felt when he saw the coffin approaching: how he could not leave his work, and yet did not like to go on with it; how he had almost slipped out of the tree, he was so upset; the rooks had cawed, and no wonder—it was as if rooks knew too.†
Part 11

She had once visited a spinster—poor, silly, and unattractive—whose mania it was that every man who approached her fell in love.†
Part 18

Mr. Wilcox, aren't you ever amused at the solemnity with which we middle classes approach the subject of houses?†
Part 18

No more tempting approach could be imagined for the lukewarm Christian, and if he still finds the walk too long, the devil is defeated all the same, Science having built Holy Trinity, a Chapel of Ease, near the Charles's and roofed it with tin.†
Part 33

The nurses seemed to think such interests quite natural, and perhaps hers was an average approach to the Great Gate.†
Part 34

Definitions:

(1) (approach as in: approached the city)
to get closer to (near in space, time, quantity, or quality)
(2) (approach as in: use the best approach)
a way of doing something; or a route that leads to a particular place
(3) (approach as in: approached her with the proposal)
to begin communication with someone about something -- often a proposal or a delicate topic
(4) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
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.