may
[mɑj]
The verdict
“may” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #5,282) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #5,282
- frequency rank, German
- 3,571
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - fünfter Monat im Kalenderjahr; Mai
Corpus desk
Index DE-may · may · German
may · rank #5,282 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #5,282
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,571
- PHOTO-FINISH matt
Nearest frequency peer: matt (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Häufigkeitsnachbarn des Verwechslers „may“
Peers mit ähnlichem Corpus-Gewicht, getrennt von den Verwechslungspaaren unten
- Konzern
Konzern
94,722 corpus weight
- Leiche
Leiche
94,721 corpus weight
- matt
matt
94,720 corpus weight
- may
may
94,719 corpus weight
- Medium
Medium
94,718 corpus weight
- Michel
Michel
94,717 corpus weight
What this shows Balken platzieren „may“ gegen die nächsten gerankten deutschen Lemmata, kein Reprint der Verwechslungsdesk.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | may |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [mɑj] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #5,282 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus-Rang neben Verwechslern von „may“
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for may is neighbouring look-alikes ("mm", "me", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced [mɑj]. Frequency #5,282 among 3,571 “M” headwords. Gloss: "fünfter Monat im Kalenderjahr; Mai".
may doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "mm", "me", "my", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is may, spelled M-A-Y.
Definition
- 1fünfter Monat im Kalenderjahr; Mai
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 German corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "may"?
What does "may" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "may"?
How do you pronounce "may"?
What language does "may" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "may", not the corpus desk frequency band.