hap
/hæp/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.04 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A stroke of good or bad luck, an occurrence or happening, especially an unexpected, random, chance, or fortuitous event.
Archaic; Countable
Example Sentences
- "Cursed be good haps, and cursed be they that build / Their hopes on haps, and do not make despair / For all these certain blows the surest shield."
- "And whether art it were, or heedless hap, / As through the flowring forest rash she fled, / In her rude hairs sweet flowres themselves did lap / And flourishing fresh leaves and blossoms did enwrap."
- "Each day ſtill better others happineſſe, Vntill the heauens enuying earths good hap, Adde an immortall title to your Crowne."
- "URSULA. She's lim'd, I warrant you: we have caught her, madam. HERO. If it prove so, then loving goes by haps Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps."
- "[I]t hath been many an honest man's hap to pass for the father of children he never begot […]"
- "He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kob-der. Proto-Germanic *hampą Old Norse happbor. Middle English hap English hap From Middle English hap, happe (“chance, hap, luck, fortune”), potentially cognate with or from Old English ġehæp (“fit, convenient”) and/or Old Norse happ (“hap, chance, good luck”), from Proto-Germanic *hampą (“convenience, happiness”), from Proto-Indo-European *kob- (“good fortune, prophecy; to bend, bow, fit in, work, succeed”). Cognate with Icelandic happ (“hap, chance, good luck”). Related also to Icelandic heppinn (“lucky, fortunate, happy”), Old Danish hap (“fortunate”), Swedish hampa (“to turn out”), Old Church Slavonic кобь (kobĭ, “fate”), Old Irish cob (“victory”). The verb is from Middle English happen, perhaps from Old English hæppan (“to move accidentally, slip”) and/or from Old Norse *happa, *heppa, from Proto-Germanic *hampijaną (“to fit in, be fitting”), from the noun. Cognate with Old Danish happe (“to chance, happen”), Norwegian heppa (“to occur, happen”).