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