perhaps — English Dictionary

Adverb

1. Possibly.

   Usage

   • not-comparable

   Examples

   Perhaps John will come over for dinner.

   There was a perhaps credible witness.

   More examples (5)

   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; […].

   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.

2. By chance.

   Usage

   • Dated
   • not-comparable

   Examples

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

Noun

1. An uncertainty.

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   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. by chance

   Synonyms

   possiblyperchancemaybemayhapperadventure

   Examples

   perhaps she will call tomorrow

   we may possibly run into them at the concert

   More examples (1)

   it may peradventure be thought that there never was such a time