may vs my, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“may” is a verb and “my” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#110
“may” frequency rank: #27
“my” frequency rank: 137
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	may	my
Definition	To be strong; to have power (over).	First-person singular possessive determiner. See Appendix:Possessive#English.

Where the eye mixes may and my

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

3 ch

may

2 ch

Visual trap between may and my

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: may is /meɪ/ while my is /maɪ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 137, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

may is recorded at frequency rank #110, classified as averb, pronounced /meɪ/. my is at rank #27, tagged as adet, pronounced /maɪ/.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 137, this pair ranks #529,830 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of may vs my

Shared letters: my. Private to "may": a. Private to "my": -.

"may" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "my" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "may" for "my" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "may" is a verb and "my" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "may" or "my"?

"my" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27 in our English list, against #110 for "may". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "may" and "my" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

Full dictionary entry for "may" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "my" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #529,830 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"may" and "my" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "may vs MPAA". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #529,830 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.