The Latin word proxĭmus came to our language as proximal . The term can be used to refer to that which is close in time or space .
For example: “Next Monday the deadline for receiving works that aspire to win the National Literature Award ends,” “Don't worry, we will buy something to eat in the next town and then we will continue our trip,” “Sports journalists say "That, if the national team does not achieve victory in its next match, the coach could be fired."
The notion of next is used to name what comes immediately or what follows in a certain order . The next World Cup , to name one example, will be held in 2022 and will be hosted in Qatar . This is because the last World Cup was held in 2018 and the tournament is played every four years: therefore, today ( 2019 ) it can be stated that the next event of this type will be Qatar 2022 .
Take the case of auditioning for a role in a musical comedy. The director of the play organizes a test and calls the applicants, who must sing for a few minutes in front of him. Thus, the artists come one by one to show their talent. Every time a performance ends, the director exclaims, “Next!” . In this way, it notifies whoever follows in the order of arrival that their turn has arrived.
In the media, these words are used very frequently in almost all areas dedicated to the dissemination of news because it is normal to talk about events that will take place in the near future . For example, when talking about movies, books or video games that will be released on the market in the coming days, the expression "upcoming releases" is used.
Since it can also be used to refer to something that is close to something else on the material plane, it is correct to say that "the Court building is close to my house" , for example. And this meaning of the adjective in question leads us to the verb approximar , or its reflexive approxir se , which is defined as "to bring closer, closer" or "to achieve a result that is as close to the exact one as is needed to meet a given objective ."
Let's look at an example sentence with this verb in one of its meanings: "As can be seen in the video, the aggressor was approaching the house when the owner arrived." In this case we can say that the aggressor was already close to his destination, since it is not a point but rather a distance range in which he has not yet arrived but is not "far away" either. Although both the verb and the adjective are perfectly understood and can appear in everyday speech, their use is more frequent in written or formal language, leaving the words approach and near for the rest of the cases.
With respect to numbers, on the other hand, approximating one value to another is an operation that we do very frequently in a "natural" way but that in school we are taught with certain rules. For example, if we want to approximate a one-digit number to a ten or zero, the technique is the following: if it is less than five, then we convert it to zero; otherwise, in ten. Starting with eleven, we take the unit as a reference: if it is less than five, we convert the unit to zero but leave the ten intact; If not, we move on to the next ten.
The idea of the Middle East , finally, refers to the region of Asia that is closest to the Mediterranean Sea . The Middle East , therefore, is equivalent to Western Asia .