Perhaps

//pəˈhæps// adv, noun

adv, noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An uncertainty.

    "I cannot conceive what atheism, or skepticism, or positivism could do for me now, with their negations, and endless and contradictory perhapses, and perhapses, and perhapses."

Adverb
  1. 1
    Possibly. not-comparable

    "Perhaps John will come over for dinner."

  2. 2
    By chance. dated, not-comparable

    "[…] will live until he dies perhaps, and then lie down in clover."

Adverb
  1. 1
    by chance wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
perchancemaybebechancebelikebelikeblind guess

Example

More examples

"Perhaps you are right, I have been selfish."

Etymology

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).

Related phrases

cake songcould befancy termlike maybemay bemaybe canmaybe maybemaybe mightmaybe possiblymaybe sorta

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.