may vs might vs could

Can you take your boots off in the mud room before coming into the living room?

By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Cookie Policy, Privacy Policy, and our Terms of Service. Sister (deterministic assertion): Tomorrow is a holiday. Difference between elucidate and explicate. And if you’re saying that there’s a possibility of something not happening, you should use might to avoid confusion. But if you did it, my having a happy day would no longer be unlikely. Would is the preterite form of will, the latter of which is used mostly to mark future tense, and not as a modal. Feel welcome to tell me what you think about my pragmatics, “It could/might/may be funny” — what is the correct usage? For [can] and [may], the preterite forms are generally used with a greater degree of modal remoteness than are the present tense forms (as other answers note).

Your host may say. But I may go to the cinema also has another meaning: that of possibility, and it means that going to the cinema is on the speaker's short list of possible activities. The optative is similar in use to the subjunctive to denote. If the plane goes down, the oxygen mask will automatically drop down and you can pull out the life vest from under your seat. When holding down two keys on a keyboard what is the expected behavior? Sister (unlikelihood): Would he know the way to the beach?

Quite possibly, in this kind of reasoning, the speaker, to some extent, externalizes the internal conditions on which the decision hinges. How do I choose between “can” and “could”? If the plane went down, the oxygen mask would automatically drop down and you could pull out the life vest from under your seat. @FumbleFingers The OP has already noted that question in his question and explained why it doesn't answer his question fully. It is not simply true that the speaker can go to the cinema, because that is only possible if he doesn't choose some other mutually exclusive activity for the evening which precludes going to the cinema.

And I might go to the cinema means approximately the same thing. has multiple interpretations. Why does my model produce too good to be true output?

One answer looked quite useful in that it covered levels of confidence and certainty but it was talking about the potential state of something rather than the possibility for the person who is speaking. I could go to the cinema tonight or I could go clubbing. YA Fiction Series: Color-coded magic system and protagonist kills brother at high school, macOS: Disconnect Wi-Fi without turning it off. I had an English professor once (actually, he was my father, but he was an English professor and he taught me most of what I know about the language) who told me, when I raised a question much like yours, that English modals are like Cleopatra’s asp: CLOWN: This is most fallible, the worm's an odd worm. Are there any differences in that sense? Does anyone recognize this signature from Lord Rayleigh's "The Theory of Sound"? What possible different response might one have to each? It is a mirror of society and even a mirror of the changes society is undergoing. If you take your boots off, that will make my day. Could is the preterite form of can, and both can be used as modals. And crucially, what distinguishes the other three. Might I just point out that (facetious usages excepted) I think.

For example, if you lean over the rail, you might fall is more correct than if you lean over the rail, you may fall because you may fall states a possibility which is not conditional on anything. Sister (impossibility): If he had a magic carpet, he should use it! An easy way to express/remember this difference is that might suggests a lower probability than does may . May expresses likelihood while might expresses a stronger sense of doubt or a contrary-to-fact hypothetical. The choice of a modal auxiliary depends on how polite you want to be, on the type of relationship the speaker and the listener are in. So it’s quite futile to try to draw bright lines (or even merely mildly fuzzy globes) around any modal and say “This is its core meaning”.
As we live in a world that is more democratic than it used to be, hierarchical relationships are resented and played down, and using 'May I?' I'm a native English speaker and I've been doing some research into English grammar for a programme I'm working on. People speak real-time. hypothetical, whereas may deals with situations that are possible or could be factual. What's the difference between “possibility” and “contingency”? Difference beween requests “can”, “could” and “may”? Probability can be conditional, or unconditional. Using subjunctive speech in such a situation is so much more reassuring to passengers than the flight steward announcing assertively. I may go to the cinema is very similar to I can go the cinema, but as a native speaker, you know the difference between can and may being that between ability and permission or possibility. Many native speakers disagree on which one expresses more or less certainty.

Retrospective (postmortem what-if analysis). Now about may. Shall originally means "to owe". Did Apple introduce a white list of hard drives (for MacBook Pro A1278)? All of them show historical change in usage and in meaning: preterite forms are no longer restricted to past tense (and present forms drop out of use), and meanings have shifted from non-modal meanings to modal meanings. What is the difference between 'framework curriculum' and 'curricular framework'? So you may go to a party if Matt Damon invites you, but you might go to a party if your least favorite cousin invites you. Can originally meant "to know (how)".

Can a player spend a fate point to declare it a full moon? Another is that, as you are finding, those fields overlap to an appalling extent — not just the four you’re working with, it might almost be true of any four selected at random. The problem with approaches to grammar is that words are expected to make rules, whereas words work only in context. I would say modals are not black or white grammar – right or wrong – but grey grammar – it depends! instead, which, etymologically, means asking the listener whether or not it is materially possible for me to do or get something… and is a little rude, as it kind of shoves the listener and his subjectivity aside to make way for objective conditions!
restores the listener to some of its former glory.

The difference between I could go the cinema and I might/may go to the cinema is that the former is associated with reasoning about conditions or alternatives, whereas the latter is just a statement of possibility. [...] Look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in the keeping of wise people; for, indeed, there is no goodness in worm. We speak the same language as the people around us, but with connotation the people do not have. Tomorrow, if I asked you to help me, would you do it? The difference in degree between “You may be right” and “You might be right” is slight but not insignificant: if I say you may be right about something, there is a higher degree of probability that you are right about it than if I say you might be right about something.


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