See may in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "may",
"tags": [
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "might",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "–",
"tags": [
"negative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "may",
"2": "might"
},
"expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
"name": "verb4"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"text": "\"May I sit here?\" \"Yes, go ahead. The seat is empty.\""
},
{
"text": "You may not smoke, this area is \"no smoking\"."
}
],
"glosses": [
"To be allowed to; to have permission to do something"
],
"id": "simple-may-en-verb-cQ9vvo2K",
"raw_tags": [
"modal"
]
},
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"text": "He may be lying, but I'm not sure."
},
{
"text": "It may rain today."
}
],
"glosses": [
"If you say something may happen or may be true, you mean there is a chance that it is true."
],
"id": "simple-may-en-verb-61xqpKeD",
"raw_tags": [
"modal"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"enpr": "mā"
},
{
"ipa": "/meɪ̯/"
},
{
"sampa": "/meI/"
},
{
"audio": "en-us-May.ogg",
"tags": [
"US"
]
}
],
"tags": [
"auxiliary",
"modal"
],
"word": "may"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "may",
"tags": [
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "might",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "–",
"tags": [
"negative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "may",
"2": "might"
},
"expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
"name": "verb4"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"Modal auxiliary verbs"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "\"May I sit here?\" \"Yes, go ahead. The seat is empty.\""
},
{
"text": "You may not smoke, this area is \"no smoking\"."
}
],
"glosses": [
"To be allowed to; to have permission to do something"
],
"raw_tags": [
"modal"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"Modal auxiliary verbs"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "He may be lying, but I'm not sure."
},
{
"text": "It may rain today."
}
],
"glosses": [
"If you say something may happen or may be true, you mean there is a chance that it is true."
],
"raw_tags": [
"modal"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"enpr": "mā"
},
{
"ipa": "/meɪ̯/"
},
{
"sampa": "/meI/"
},
{
"audio": "en-us-May.ogg",
"tags": [
"US"
]
}
],
"tags": [
"auxiliary",
"modal"
],
"word": "may"
}
Download raw JSONL data for may meaning in English (1.0kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-06 from the simplewiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (0ee4b87 and 9dbd323). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.