Perhaps Meaning
/pəˈhæps/Definition, CEFR level A2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
advPossibly.
advBy chance.
Sentence Examples
Perhaps you are right, I have been selfish.
It will be fine weather tomorrow, perhaps.
We should perhaps try a different approach tomorrow.
CEFR Practice Quiz
We are not sure if it will rain today, so we ____ just in case bring an umbrella.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
____ the most important lesson she learned was that failure is often the first step toward success.
Word Origin & History
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).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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."
— 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"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."
— 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
"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; […]."
— 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:
"However, before most of this was experimentally and observationally discovered, they were perhaps best known for their “almost unique” ability to squirt ink when harangued, creating a smokescreen before jetting off to safety."
— 2017 August 9, Mark Carnall, “Why do cephalopods produce ink? And what's ink made of, anyway?”, in The Guardian:
"[…] will live until he dies perhaps, and then lie down in clover."
— c. 1850, “Landlord, Fill the Flowing Bowl”:
Explore More A2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
We are not sure if it will rain today, so we ____ just in case bring an umbrella.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
____ the most important lesson she learned was that failure is often the first step toward success.