Definition of "approaching"

The evacuation of approaching 200,000 people, along with reports of high radiation levels, of burning spent fuel, and apocalyptic footage of plumes of debris erupting from the stricken plant, will revive a question that seemed to have been retreating from global concerns: how safe is nuclear power?

2011 March 16, “There's more to fear from nature than nuclear power”, in Opinion, New Scientist

But we can also take a more analytical attitude to these displays, interpreting the movements as no more than approachings, touchings, and departings with no implication that one shape caused the other to move.

2011, Lance J. Rips, Lines of Thought: Central Concepts in Cognitive Psychology, page 168