Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adv. Perhaps; possibly.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- By chance; perhaps; peradventure.
- By chance; accidentally.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adv. By chance; perhaps; peradventure.
WordNet 3.0
- adv. by chance
- adv. through chance,
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Anglo-Norman par chance : par, by (from Latin per; see per) + chance, chance (from Old French; see chance).
Examples
“Obsolete has been keeping an eye on Alisher Usmanov Parental Guidance, unless Schillings have perchance added a short word beginning in c to their name?”
“Within a very little while, thou wilt be either ashes, or a sceletum; and a name perchance; and perchance, not so much as a name.”
“Shrewsbury, and if I told my name perchance it might travel back, and I was in no mind to have my mischances retailed in the town.”
“-- I am a man of the people, a man who acts, -- I _was_, I mean, -- not a man who thinks; and all your subtleties of word perchance entrap me.”
“If perchance a kasid or a chance traveler entered Santipur, the trick he had practised there would be immediately discovered; but if the messenger only touched at the places on the direct route on the other bank, he might hope that some time would elapse before the authorities there suspected that he had left the river.”
“May-time, that I shall never hold that dainty oval face in my hands again, shall look into those beautiful eyes no more, that all the intimacy of her person is now but a memory never to be renewed by actual presence -- in these moments of passionate memory one experiences real grief, a pang that never has found expression perchance except in”
“-- I am a man of the people, a man who acts, -- I was, I mean, -- not a man who thinks; and all your subtleties of word perchance entrap me.”
“On this morning of the Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, I bear the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England northeast snow-storm, and”
“Well, honestly the idea perchance could be used with virtually any a combination of online websites whether it be Fromhomeperfectwealth and Gold-members-online or 2buyxango. com and Myrichmindset.”
“[Proust's passage] contrasts two ways of evoking the natural experience of summer and unambiguously states its preference for one of these ways over the other: the "necessary link" that unites the buzzing of the flies to the summer makes it a much more effective symbol than the tune heard "perchance" during the summer.”
Professing Literature: John Guillory's Misreading of Paul de Man
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘perchance’.
bilby "Those which lately even I tasted only to repent of it,--for I am semi-civilized,--which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am now glad to find have the property of hanging on like the leaves of the young oaks. It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first, solid as stones, and then the rain or a warm winter day to thaw them, and they will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of the air in which they hang. Or perchance you find, when you get home, that those which rattled in your pocket have thawed, and the ice is turned to cider." - 'Wild Apples', Henry David Thoreau. Dec 14, 2007
reesetee Or in my case, "To lie down, perchance to sleep." (See insomnia.) Oct 5, 2007
orbitalcombustion "To sleep, perchance to dream." Oct 5, 2007
quotato or, at least I shall dream about it. Feb 28, 2007