856: maybe, perhaps, and mayhap Apr 12, 2017

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The words 'maybe', 'perhaps', and 'mayhap' can generally be used interchangeably, though some are chosen more frequently than others. Not only do those terms have related meanings, but their formations are all quite similar; the three of them were all originally stated as a phrase in the same way as 'goodbye' began as 'G-d be with you'. 'Maybe' may be the most understandable, as—much like in that clause—'may' is a modal verb and so guarantees that 'be' is not conjugated. Since 'may' in this case will always be followed by 'be', people just joined these together and interpreted the meaning adverbially. With 'perhaps' and 'mayhap', these both happened to come from 'hap' which is not used often at all anymore, but meant 'occur by chance' or more intuitively, 'happen'. 'Perhaps' comes from the meaning of 'per' as 'through' i.e. 'through chance', while 'mayhap' has the same first element as 'maybe'.

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