What does the notation "$\sim$" mean as in "proportional to/in the same order of"?

48 Views Asked by At

I have a book where they define the notation $\sim$ in $a \sim b$ as in "$a$ proportional to $b$" or "$a$ is in the same order of b" but what does this really mean? I read somewhere that it means asymptotically equal to but I'm not sure if it's equivalent to this context. Can anyone provide intuition for this or why and when we should use this notation as compared to $\simeq$?