perhaps
/pɚˈhæps/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.09 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adv
noun
An uncertainty.
Example Sentences
- "Perhaps John will come over for dinner."
- "There was a perhaps credible witness."
- "He was seriously wounded, perhaps fatally."
- "The stories did not seem to me to touch life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed."
- "With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London."
- "It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: perhaps out of a desire to escape the gravity of this world or to get a preview of the next; […]."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per- Proto-Italic *per Latin per Old French parbor. Middle English per- Proto-Indo-European *kob-der. Proto-Germanic *hampą Old Norse happbor. Middle English hap Middle English perhap Middle English perhappes ▲ Middle English perhap Middle English perhappous English perhaps From Middle English perhappes, perhappous, variant of earlier perhap (“perhaps, possibly”), equivalent to per- + hap (“chance, coincidence”) + -s, on model of Middle English parchaunce (modern perchance).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: perhappes, parchaunce
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /pɚˈhæps/
- British English: /pəˈhæps/