mayvsmeWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: may is a verb, me is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#5,226
“may” frequency rank
#28
“me” frequency rank
5254
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature may me
Definition obter permissão. Também utilizado quando se deseja fazer um pedido, de maneira cortês. pronome pessoal oblíquo átono da primeira pessoa do singular, usado em complementos direto do verbo:

Letter map: may vs me

Shared letters muted; letters that set may and me apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
may
2 ch
me

Part-of-speech tell for may / me

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: may is averb and meapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 5254, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

may is recorded at frequency rank #5,226, classified as averb, pronounced /meɪ/. me is at rank #28, tagged as apron.

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 5254, this pair ranks #69,409 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of may vs me

Shared letters: m. Private to "may": ay. Private to "me": e.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "may" for "me" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "may" is a verb and "me" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "may" vs "me" - which ranks higher?
"me" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28 in our Portuguese list, against #5,226 for "may". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "may" and "me".

  • Full dictionary entry for "may" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "me" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #69,409 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "may" and "me" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs may". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #69,409 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list