hap
A person's lot (good or bad), luck, fortune, fate.
Noun archaic, uncountable
- A person's lot (good or bad), luck, fortune, fate.
- A stroke of good or bad luck, an occurrence or happening, especially an unexpected, random, chance, or fortuitous event.
- Cursed be good haps, and cursed be they that build / Their hopes on haps, and do not make despair / For all these certain blows the surest shield. - c. 1580s, Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, book...
- And whether art it were, or heedless hap, / As through the flowring forest rash she fled, / In her rude hairs sweet flowres themselves did lap / And flourishing fresh leaves and blossoms did enwrap. - 1590, Edmund...
- Each day ſtill better others happineſſe, Vntill the heauens enuying earths good hap, Adde an immortall title to your Crowne. - 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King...
Origin
From Middle English hap, happe (“chance, hap, luck, fortune”), potentially cognate with or from Old English ġehæp (“fit, convenient”) and/or Old Norse happ (“hap, chance, good luck”), from Proto-Germanic *hampą (“convenience, happiness”), from Proto-Indo-European *kob- (“good fortune, prophecy; to bend, bow, fit in, work, succeed”). Cognate with Icelandic happ (“hap, chance, good luck”). Related also to Icelandic heppinn (“lucky, fortunate, happy”), Old Danish hap (“fortunate”), Swedish hampa (“to turn out”), Old Church Slavonic кобь (kobĭ, “fate”), Old Irish cob (“victory”). The verb is from Middle English happen, perhaps from Old English hæppan (“to move accidentally, slip”) and/or from Old Norse *happa, *heppa, from Proto-Germanic *hampijaną (“to fit in, be fitting”), from the noun. Cognate with Old Danish happe (“to chance, happen”), Norwegian heppa (“to occur, happen”).
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Derived
goodhap hapful haphazard hapless haply happen happy hapsome mayhap mishap perhaps unhap
Noun archaic, in plural
- Happenings; events; goings-on. [from 20th c.]
- Katie Griffin as Samantha Sparks: "Hey, Flint. I heard your extended (gasp) earlier. What's the haps?" Mark Edwards as Flint Lockwood: "The haps is -- you're not going to believe this, but dad asked me to make him an...
Origin
Clipping of happening.
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Noun Pennsylvania, Scotland
- A wrap, such as a quilt or a comforter. Also, a small or folded blanket placed on the end of a bed to keep feet warm.
Origin
Etymology tree Old English hap English hap Inherited from Old English hap.
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Noun archaic
- Any of the cichlid fishes of the tribe Haplochromini.
Origin
Shortening of New Latin Haplochromis
Forms
Verb archaic, intransitive
- To happen; to befall; to chance.
- "But laudably, since thus it happed!" quoth one: Whereat, more witness and the case postponed. "Thus it happed not, since thus he did the deed,.... - 1868-9, Robert Browning, “The Ring and the Book”, in Edward Berdoe,...
- "We must go there to retrieve it before the Krikkit robots find it, or who knows what may hap." - 1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 81:
Synonyms: come to pass occur transpire bechance befall belimp betide betime chance come about crop up evene eventuate go on hap happen hold pass take place tide
- To happen to.
- What meaneth June, to hap us every year. - 1891, Elizabeth Stoddard, “No Answer”, in Harper's magazine, page 55:
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Verb archaic, dialectal
- To wrap, clothe.
- Bless thy pretty heart! The bairn’s sick. Come wi’ me, and I’ll hap thee up somewhere. If thou wert a bit cleaner I’d put thee in my own bed, for the Lord’s sake. - 1863, Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale...
- The surgeon happed her up carefully. - 1859, John Brown, Rab and his Friends:
- The practice was, before firing a shot for the purpose of blasting, to give an order to hap the crane, that is, to cover it, in order to protect it from the effect of the shot. - 1899, “Bartonshill Coal Co. v. Beid, 1...