https://youtu.be/fWNaR-rxAic
I wrote "perhaps" in a facebook message to a friend, and then I started wondering, why did I say "perhaps" rather than "maybe"? Why do we have these two synonyms? Does "perhaps" sound old-fashioned and formal?
Half French or Latin (per = "by") and half Viking (hap, = chance or good fortune, the source of "happy" and "happen"), "perhaps" is a lovely hybrid word showing the mixed-up nature of the history of English.
It was rather late to the party of "possibly" words, turning up in the early 1500s, when several other synonyms -- "peradventure", "percase", "perchance", "mayhap", "haply" -- had already been around for over a hundred years. But, fortunately for the lyricist of the Doris Day song above (try writing a song with the refrain "peradventure"!), "perhaps" marched steadfastly to dominance from the 1600s onward.
But is it in turn going to be ousted by an upstart, in this case "maybe"?
"Maybe", a smooshed-together version of the phrase "it may be", is in fact older than "perhaps", dating from the 1400s. The OED has this to say:
Although found in major 17th-cent. writers, the word is not frequent in standard literary English before the mid 19th cent., but becomes frequent in poetic sources in the later 19th cent. It occurs frequently in 19th-cent. novels as a marker of dialectal or colloquial speech, and is labelled in the New English Dictionary (1906) as ‘archaic and dialectal’ and by J. Elphinston Principles of the English Language (1750) as a colloquialism, although it is entered without comment in Johnson and Webster.How odd to think of "maybe" being considered "archaic and dialectal" just over a century ago. But if you look at the charts below, comparing frequencies over time in the Corpus of Historical American English, you can see how very infrequent it was, at least in writing, in the 19th century. You can see "perhaps" steadily holding its own, but "maybe" creeps up on it, and then gallops to overtake it at the end of the 20th century, a trend confirmed by the more recent Corpus of Contemporary American English.
The COCA charts also reveal that "maybe" is much more common in spoken English, whereas "perhaps" is more favoured in writing. In fact, one group of writers doesn't want any of your damn "maybe", thank you very much: academics sure don't like it!
But if the increased overall use of "maybe" continues (and there's no reason to think it won't), "perhaps" will likely begin to sound more and more formal, stuffy, and possibly (eventually) as archaic as "mayhap" or "peradventure". I think it is only a matter of time before "maybe" becomes very dominant.
Besides, "maybe" has a secret weapon: it is the only word in Modern English that rhymes with "baby", thus making it a shoo-in for use in popular songs. "Perhaps", in contrast, has many more rhymes, but here they are:
- collapse
- elapse
- prolapse
- relapse
- synapse
- lapse
- caps
- chaps
- claps
- craps
- flaps
- gaps
- laps
- Lapps
- maps
- naps
- raps
- saps
- scraps
- slaps
- snaps
- straps
- taps
- traps
- wraps
- yaps
- zaps
I can't imagine Carly Rae Jepsen making a hit out of any of those! Not even perchance.
Tell me what you think about "perhaps" and "maybe". Is "perhaps" beginning to sound old-fashioned? Would you ever use "maybe" in formal writing?
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| perhaps - COHA | ||||
| SECTION | FREQ | SIZE (M) | PER MIL | |
| 1810 | 494 | 1.2 | 418.22 | 
|
| 1820 | 3,169 | 6.9 | 457.47 |
|
| 1830 | 5,114 | 13.8 | 371.26 |
|
| 1840 | 5,354 | 16.0 | 333.62 |
|
| 1850 | 6,131 | 16.5 | 372.22 |
|
| 1860 | 6,188 | 17.1 | 362.83 |
|
| 1870 | 7,077 | 18.6 | 381.26 |
|
| 1880 | 7,258 | 20.3 | 357.26 |
|
| 1890 | 7,334 | 20.6 | 356.00 |
|
| 1900 | 7,866 | 22.1 | 355.97 |
|
| 1910 | 8,296 | 22.7 | 365.45 |
|
| 1920 | 8,716 | 25.7 | 339.76 |
|
| 1930 | 7,384 | 24.6 | 300.13 |
|
| 1940 | 7,698 | 24.3 | 316.17 |
|
| 1950 | 7,533 | 24.5 | 306.91 |
|
| 1960 | 7,408 | 24.0 | 308.96 |
|
| 1970 | 7,752 | 23.8 | 325.51 |
|
| 1980 | 7,944 | 25.3 | 313.79 |
|
| 1990 | 7,218 | 27.9 | 258.33 |
|
| 2000 | 6,486 | 29.6 | 219.36 |
|
| TOTAL | 132,420 | |||
| maybe - COHA | ||||
| SECTION | FREQ | SIZE (M) | PER MIL | |
| 1810 | 9 | 1.2 | 7.62 |
|
| 1820 | 37 | 6.9 | 5.34 |
|
| 1830 | 126 | 13.8 | 9.15 |
|
| 1840 | 215 | 16.0 | 13.40 |
|
| 1850 | 163 | 16.5 | 9.90 |
|
| 1860 | 522 | 17.1 | 30.61 |
|
| 1870 | 413 | 18.6 | 22.25 |
|
| 1880 | 513 | 20.3 | 25.25 |
|
| 1890 | 420 | 20.6 | 20.39 |
|
| 1900 | 1,216 | 22.1 | 55.03 |
|
| 1910 | 2,122 | 22.7 | 93.48 |
|
| 1920 | 2,706 | 25.7 | 105.48 |
|
| 1930 | 4,083 | 24.6 | 165.96 |
|
| 1940 | 5,218 | 24.3 | 214.31 |
|
| 1950 | 5,784 | 24.5 | 235.65 |
|
| 1960 | 5,987 | 24.0 | 249.70 |
|
| 1970 | 6,961 | 23.8 | 292.29 |
|
| 1980 | 7,419 | 25.3 | 293.06 |
|
| 1990 | 10,232 | 27.9 | 366.19 |
|
| 2000 | 10,895 | 29.6 | 368.48 |
|
| TOTAL | 65,041 | |||
| perhaps -COCA | ||||
| SECTION | FREQ | SIZE (M) | PER MIL | |
| SPOKEN | 19,368 | 109.4 | 177.05 | 
|
| FICTION | 27,024 | 104.9 | 257.61 |
|
| MAGAZINE | 22,341 | 110.1 | 202.90 |
|
| NEWSPAPER | 16,410 | 106.0 | 154.86 |
|
| ACADEMIC | 24,558 | 103.4 | 237.45 |
|
| 1990-1994 | 25,302 | 104.0 | 243.29 |
|
| 1995-1999 | 22,118 | 103.4 | 213.81 |
|
| 2000-2004 | 21,542 | 102.9 | 209.27 |
|
| 2005-2009 | 19,197 | 102.0 | 188.13 |
|
| 2010-2015 | 21,542 | 121.6 | 177.20 |
|
| TOTAL | 109,701 | |||
| maybe -COCA | ||||
| SECTION | FREQ | SIZE (M) | PER MIL | |
| SPOKEN | 46,237 | 109.4 | 422.67 |
|
| FICTION | 63,619 | 104.9 | 606.47 |
|
| MAGAZINE | 17,165 | 110.1 | 155.89 |
|
| NEWSPAPER | 16,084 | 106.0 | 151.79 |
|
| ACADEMIC | 3,234 | 103.4 | 31.27 |
|
| 1990-1994 | 25,027 | 104.0 | 240.65 |
|
| 1995-1999 | 28,809 | 103.4 | 278.49 |
|
| 2000-2004 | 27,102 | 102.9 | 263.28 |
|
| 2005-2009 | 28,765 | 102.0 | 281.90 |
|
| 2010-2015 | 36,636 | 121.6 | 301.36 |
|
| TOTAL | 146,339 | |||