The look is slightly marred by every piece of furniture - and every other object within the house - being covered in a high-tech version of those clear vinyl covers you see on couches in the living room of many a house. Now picturing statuesque and stately homes being shipped around the world, with product safely ensconced within in a comfy chair. "ALL MATERIALS ARE TO BE PACKAGED IN A MANOR THAT WILL PREVENT OUTSIDE CONTAMINATION FROM COMING IN CONTACT WITH THE MATERIAL, AND PREVENT SURFACE SCRATCHING DURING SHIPMENT OF THE PRODUCT." Subsequently there arose a use of might in virtually indistinguishable contexts, but having the possibility of greater tentativeness (sense 26). because that's a lot of ellipses otherwise if anyone really wants to know what those entries say I can post them):įrom the late Middle English period senses 7a and 7b contrasted with the use of might expressing both the past subjective possibility of a situation (sense 18a originally in indirect statements) and the present subjective possibility of a past situation (sense 18b this function was taken over by sense 7c). 180 The eye may be the visual organ, but it is the brain that sees.īut there's a paragraph in the entry for sense 7 addressing the may/might distinction as well (I'll leave the references to senses 7a, 18b, 26 etc. 58 You may force fruit, but you cannot force flavour.ġ984 A. Used in one of a pair of coordinate clauses with concessive force (may be or do.but = ‘although.is’ or ‘does’).ġ903 D. Re: the may/might distinction, I think it's being used in sense 8 of the Oxford English Dictionary's definition "may"):Ĩ.
But I run into this grammar thing in many other books.) So he *really is* unsure how many people he's killed.
(Side note: in my original quoted example, the protagonist is an assassin who has his memory wiped after every job. I agree that the problem is that one degree of freedom (may/might) is trying to do two jobs, so there's probably no solution that will work for every reader. The last case is the one that bothers me. "He may have a good job, but it was still important that he managed his money carefully." "He might have a good job, but it was still important that he managed his money carefully." (Yes, that latter is a lot of complexity to lay on one verb!)īut in third-person-past-tense it's all different again:
The first is a counterfactual, but perhaps the speaker has a good job anyway and is excluding it from the domain of discourse for the sake of argument! The second definitely has a good job it's an idiom questioning causality. "I may have a good job, but it is still important that I manage my money carefully." "I might have a good job, but it is still important that I manage my money carefully." Which means, as I noted, that I could have picked up a usage that is uncommon or wrong. I appreciate the continued discussion on may/might! It's one of those things I picked up without being formally taught.
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