No, they were right—languages change and a single tilde (~) definitely means approximately: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik

No, they were right—languages change and a single tilde (~) definitely means approximately: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde Most people associate a double tilde with “approximately equal”.