may
/meɪ/
The verdict
“may” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #5,226) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #5,226
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 1,087
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - obter permissão. Também utilizado quando se deseja fazer um pedido, de maneira cortês.
Corpus desk
Index PT-may · may · Portuguese
may · rank #5,226 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #5,226
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,087
- PHOTO-FINISH make
Nearest frequency peer: make (-3 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.
Vizinhos de frequência do confusável “may”
Pares de peso semelhante no corpus, aparte dos confusáveis abaixo
- lesão
lesão
94,782 corpus weight
- look
look
94,779 corpus weight
- make
make
94,778 corpus weight
- may
may
94,775 corpus weight
- navegação
navegação
94,772 corpus weight
- negociar
negociar
94,771 corpus weight
What this shows As barras situam “may” face aos lemas portugueses mais próximos por rank, não um reprint da secretária de confusáveis.
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 | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /meɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #5,226 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rank de corpus junto a confusáveis de “may”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for may is neighbouring look-alikes ("me", "my", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced /meɪ/. Frequency #5,226 among 1,087 “M” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Zero misspellings are on record for may in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "me", "my", "mi", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct Portuguese form is may, spelled M-A-Y.
Definition
- 1obter permissão. Também utilizado quando se deseja fazer um pedido, de maneira cortês.
- 2Provavelmente, mas não certamente.
- 3poder, no sentido de possibilidade
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how may appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
You may smoke outside.
May I sit there?
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 Portuguese corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar Portuguese words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "may", not the corpus desk frequency band.