Let me try to answer a few. Allow me to answer a few. <-- virtually identical. "Allow" sounds more formal. Good answers include explanation. <-- answer = explanation + more Good answers consist of explanation. answer = explanation + 0 extra Good answers consist of explanation and other things. <-- virtually the same as the first one. counterpart - means equivalent. Sometimes the opposite of partner. He is minister of commerce. His counterpart in the opposition is Mr. Freddrick. (i.e. shadow minister of commerce) . Smith is fullback. His counterpart on the other team was much smaller. . Preclude means to do something that rules out an action. Not going out precludes being run over in the street. That is, the second event cannot happen, by being the situation avoided. . Prevent is far more general. Help prevent accidents: install rails on stairs. .Sorry, not so clear. Maybe someone else will do better. I hope I have not precluded anyone else trying. . Approval generally means a willing acceptance. Her father approved of the marriage. The guy was fine and upstahnding. . accept has no in-build assumption of being happy about it. . The guy had no job, no money, no shoes. Her father would never approve, but accepted that she loved him. "Approval" can also be used for a strict ruling of "yes", but this is a formal sense. She could not marry without her father's approval. He reluctantly gave it after her nagging him for a year. . "approximate" is an adjective and a verb. You have mixed parts of speech, which makes it a little difficult to know what exactly you want. I will try to approximate an answer. Give an approximate answer. 20 degress to day, approximately. 20 degrees today, roughly. I estimate its 20 degrees today. <-- same sense. . Technically an estimate means only that the answer is not strictly accurate, it does not imply it is not very close. In common speech, howevere, estimate, usually means a somewhat rough estimate. . Out fo space, merely a few to go.

Not really clear whether you want the difference, when used similarly, or the overall difference, eg including how they might be used where the other cannot be used. If the latter, maybe post in smaller chunks and people will be more likely to answer short questions.